Florida Republican introduces bill to add Trump to Mount Rushmore

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Tuesday seeking to add President Trump’s face to the Mount Rushmore monument.

“His remarkable accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue to deliver deserve the highest recognition and honor on this iconic national monument,” Luna wrote in a Tuesday post on the social platform X.

“Let's get carving!”

The Interior Department would be in charge of undertaking Trump’s addition to the South Dakota landmark if approved by Congress.

“Mount Rushmore, a timeless symbol of our nation’s freedom and strength, deserves to reflect his towering legacy—a legacy further solidified by the powerful start to his second term,” Luna shared in a separate statement.

“He will be forever remembered among the great like Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.”

Luna is not the first person to float the idea. Fox News contributors this week suggested adding Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, which is set for 2026.

“If you did, like, the 250th anniversary of the country at Mount Rushmore with President Trump’s face, it would be epic,” Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former press secretary, said this week on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered.”

Trump didn’t disapprove of the idea in 2019 but was careful to note the potential bad press for supporting a costly addition to the monument.

“If I answer that question, ‘Yes,’ I will end up with such bad publicity,” Trump told The Hill.

“This monument will never be desecrated. These heroes will never be disgraced. Their legacy will never, ever be destroyed. Their achievements will never be forgotten,” he said during a 2020 speech ahead of the Fourth of July holiday amid proposals to tear down Confederate statues.

“And Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and our freedom.”

However, local Native American tribes have pushed back on the monument as a whole, citing concerns with the forceable taking of tribal land.

“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of NDN Collective, a local activist organization, told The Associated Press. “It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide.”

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