Keystone, SD: From its real estate developments to its golf courses, President Donald Trump is known for adding his name to his properties. Now, some of his followers want to add their similarity to one of the most emblematic monuments in the country: Mount Rushmore.
A few days after Trump assumed the position of his second term, one of his supporters in Congress presented a bill to do that precisely. Although the legislation of the representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of R-Fla., Has not advanced in the Capitol, there is an even more difficult challenge ahead for the bill: even if the measure passed, the famous mountain does not have enough rock that is adequate to be carved for Trump’s face, or any other person.
“This is geology, engineering,” said Paul Nelson, a retired engineer who supervised the rock monitoring system in Mount Rushmore. “You just can’t be done.”
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That has not prevented Trump’s supporters from floating the idea of his head in the monument.
“Well, they certainly have space for that there,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, told Trump’s daughter -in -law, Lara Trump, in her Fox news program when she asked if Trump could be in Mount Rushmore someday.
The national parks service declined to comment.
Trump himself intervened in the idea in August 2020, denying a report that the White House attendees had approached the Office of the Governor of Dakota in the south of Kristi Noem about the process to add presidents to the monument. (Noem is now Trump’s Secretary of National Security).
“He never suggested, although, based on many things achieved during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other presidency, it sounds like a good idea!” Trump said about what was called Twitter.
Trump is not the first president to make his supporters believe that he should be physically represented along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
After the death of Ronald Reagan in 2004, there were efforts to commemorate him in the monument. And even before Mount Rushmore was completed, the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt advocated adding suffragist Susan B. Anthony.
“It is wonderful specular, who could or should be in Mount Rushmore, but it cannot be done,” said Dan Wenk, who was Mount Rushmore superintendent for more than a decade. “Would you add another figure to ‘The Last Supper’ by Da Vinci? I don’t think so.
Wenk said that while it may seem that there is space next to Lincoln or Washington, the rock “is not suitable for carving”, since it is “very fractured, it is very soft.”
That has been true from the beginning. Carved for Jefferson’s face initially began to the left of Washington, but had to be transferred to his right to find stone that was acceptable. Any new size could endanger fractures already present, Nelson said.
“And so, if you are going to make other sizes on the surface, you must eliminate a lot of rock to reach the competent rock, and run the risk of perhaps mobilizing some fractures,” he said. “Then, no, I would not like to play with Mount Rushmore.”
In addition to physical abilities, some of the 2 million tourists per year that visit the monument recently shared their views on who is worthy of being included in sculpture.
“I think history will show that it is in the same pantheon,” said Robert Thomas, a Missouri tourist, about Trump.
“I think it’s a bit ridiculous,” said another tourist, Susan Davis. “Tell him to get his own mountain, he size his own image.”
However, Wenk emphasized that “at the end of the day, it cannot be done.”
“It doesn’t matter how worthy someone is: if the rock is not there, you can’t carve them.”
