Trump heads to Mount Rushmore, where efforts to impose his likeness have stalled

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump returns to Mount Rushmore on Friday, and though the president has openly mused about adding his likeness to the storied national monument, it’s unclear if he can move the mountains necessary to make it happen.

He’s brought it up jokingly at campaign rallies, posted hints on social media and called it a “good idea.” He even raised the possibility with South Dakota’s governor during his first term, saying to then-Gov. Kristi Noem during an Oval Office meeting: “Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?”

“I started laughing,” Noem recalled in a 2018 interview with the Argus Leader. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious. … I said, ‘Come pick out a mountain.’”

Though the president has spent much of his second term taking steps to impose his style and tastes on architecture in the nation’s capital and even has an airport now named after him in Florida, the buck might just stop in South Dakota. He would quite literally need to pick out another mountain — it’s structurally not possible to add a fifth face to the storied monument.

Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote in 1936 that the stone had “serious” limitations.

“I doubt if it would be possible to change the composition, which is fixed, in any way to include a fifth head,” Borglum said.

Nevertheless, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversees the National Park Service, said during an interview that there is “certainly” room for Trump’s face. And Trump ally Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, has introduced legislation that would arrange the carving, which she said would “reflect his towering legacy.”

The bill is currently stalled, and her office did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on whether Friday’s trip will prompt a renewed push for passage. The legislation has little to no chance at clearing the Senate, where it would need Democratic votes.

With or without a Trump visage, the president is returning to the national park — participating in a flyover, delivering remarks and watching a fireworks show celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary — in a vastly different climate from his 2020 visit.

Six years ago, Trump visited Keystone, South Dakota, at a moment of crisis. The country was in a worsening global pandemic with no vaccine as officials feared a surge in cases around the holiday weekend. And culture wars were raging, with protests over racial divides breaking out across the country after the death of George Floyd.

Trump’s Rushmore speech to a crowd of thousands briefly referenced Covid-19, thanking the first responders and scientists “working tirelessly to kill the virus.”

But it took a dark and divisive turn as he railed against cancel culture, which he described as a “political weapon” and “the very definition of totalitarianism,” coming at a moment when protesters were tearing down statues from Confederate monuments and other controversial historical figures.

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” Trump told a crowd of thousands on a red, white and blue-decorated stage in front of the iconic carving.

He continued: “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

Much of that 2020 speech centered on remembering the country’s past and casting it in a glorious light, and Trump repeatedly decried attempts to examine the faults in that past (a fact made more ironic by Mount Rushmore’s sculptor’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan). Trump made that message a hallmark of his 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. Shifting public sentiment on the issue, in part, helped propel him to victory in 2024, setting the stage for an aggressive cultural agenda in his second term.

It was also under the watchful eyes of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in 2020 that Trump first announced plans for a “Garden of American Heroes,” a sculpture garden honoring figures from the past.

The president signed an executive order to establish the garden, which was quickly rescinded during the Biden administration and then re-instituted in 2025. The project has a plot of land in West Potomac Park in Washington, DC, but none of its sculptures have been completed.

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