President Donald Trump once confided in South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem that it was his “dream” to be added to Mount Rushmore one day. It turns out that he was being serious. A White House aide reportedly tried looking into making Trump’s dream a reality, contacting Noem’s office to ask about the steps needed to add more presidents to the national monument, according to a source within the Republican party who spoke to The New York Times.
Noem indulged the president’s fantasy just a little bit when he arrived at the Black Hills for his Fourth of July rally. The governor presented him with a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore — with his face added as the fifth president. Noem fueled him further by comparing him to Theodore Roosevelt, one of the presidents who did make the cut, while opening his event at the base of the national monument.
Trump brought up Mount Rushmore during his first conversation with Noem, in the Oval Office. “He said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand,'” Noem said in a 2018 interview with Argus Leader. “I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’ I started laughing. He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”
The rest of the world certainly thought he was joking, but the White House aide’s reported request proves otherwise. Twitter naturally blew up as soon as they discovered Trump’s latest attempt at inflating his own ego, that he believes he can easily be added to a nearly century-old cliffside sculpture depicting four of the most famous presidents in US history: Roosevelt, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson. And that people would want him to be added.
“He’ll change the name to Mount Russia-More,” one Twitter user joked. “Did I dream this or was it really reported this weekend that Trump asked the SD gov about adding his face to Mt Rushmore and the WH response wasn’t to deny it, but note it’s a federal, not state, monument, as if the fact he’s also an idiot helps?” MSNBC’s Matthew Miller tweeted — to which someone replied, “Let’s just be impressed that he contacted the correct state.”