Originally published 2020-08-12.
Did Donald Trump want his face carved on Mount Rushmore? In August 2020 The New York Times reported that, in 2019, a White House aide had contacted South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's office to ask how a president could be added to the monument. Noem separately recalled that Trump had told her, at their first meeting in 2018, that it was his dream. Trump denied suggesting it, while adding that he liked the idea. No plan was ever approved, and experts have long said the mountain has no suitable rock left for another face.
Here is what was reported, how Trump responded, why adding a face is practically impossible, and why the monument itself remains contested by the Lakota people on whose sacred land it stands.
What the New York Times reported
The Times story, published on 8 August 2020, was mainly about Noem's growing profile in the Republican Party. Within it was a detail that travelled fast: in 2019 a White House official had asked the governor's office what the process would be for adding another president to Mount Rushmore. The report did not name the aide, and it did not suggest that any formal request or design followed.
Noem had already described an earlier conversation in public. She said that when she met Trump in the Oval Office in 2018, she invited him to visit South Dakota and mentioned the monument. By her account he replied: "Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?" She said she laughed, then realised he was not joking.
How Trump responded
On the evening of Sunday 9 August 2020, Trump dismissed the Times report and related CNN coverage on Twitter as fake news and said he had never suggested the idea. In the same post, however, he wrote that, given his record in office, it "sounds like a good idea to me!" He also posted an image of himself beside the carved faces.
The exchange came only weeks after Trump's visit to the memorial on 3 July 2020, when he spoke at an Independence Day eve event with fireworks. In that speech he defended the nation's founders against protesters who were pulling down statues, and said Mount Rushmore would stand forever as a tribute to them. Critics had questioned holding a large gathering, with limited distancing, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea did not fade entirely. In January 2025, Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida introduced a bill in Congress to add Trump's likeness to the monument. It joined a long line of similar proposals for other figures, none of which have succeeded.
Could another face even be added?
Almost certainly not, for engineering reasons alone. Mount Rushmore was carved between 1927 and 1941 under the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, whose son Lincoln Borglum finished the work after his father died in March 1941. Around 400 workers blasted and chiselled the granite, and no one died during the project. The total cost came to just under one million dollars, much of it federal money, and the figures were left unfinished below the chin when funding ran out.
When carving stopped, the sculptors said the remaining rock was unsuitable for further figures. A 1989 assessment by the engineering firm RESPEC reached the same conclusion. The granite around the existing faces is cracked, and removing more stone could threaten the carvings already there.
Past proposals have included John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and, in a 1937 bill, the suffragist Susan B. Anthony. None advanced.
The four presidents and why they were chosen
The four presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, are often described as standing for the nation's birth, growth, development and preservation. Washington's face was dedicated in 1934, Jefferson's in 1936, Lincoln's in 1937 and Roosevelt's in 1939. Each face is about 60 feet (18 metres) tall. Today the memorial draws more than two million visitors a year.
Sacred land: the Lakota view
For many Lakota, the debate over adding faces misses the larger point. The mountain sits in the Black Hills, known in Lakota as Paha Sapa, and the peak itself was called Six Grandfathers, after a vision described by the holy man Black Elk. Under the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, the United States recognised the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. After gold was found there, the US government seized the area following the Great Sioux War of 1876.
In 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that the land had been taken without just compensation and upheld an award of roughly $105 million, including interest. The Sioux nations refused the money, because accepting it would end their claim to the land itself. The funds remain in a federal account and were reported to exceed one billion dollars by 2018.
In 2020, Chairman Harold Frazier of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe objected strongly to the fireworks event and to the monument itself. Speaking to CNN, he said: "Nothing stands as a greater reminder to the Great Sioux Nation of a country that cannot keep a promise or treaty." He called for the carvings to be removed. Not every Native American shares that position, but the sense of the monument as a symbol of broken treaties is widely held among the Lakota. The tribe's long fight over land and water also shaped the legal battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Crazy Horse Memorial nearby
About 17 miles (27 km) from Mount Rushmore, another mountain carving has been under way since 1948: the Crazy Horse Memorial. It was begun by Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor who had worked on Rushmore. The face of the Oglala Lakota leader was dedicated in 1998. The project accepts no federal or state money and relies on visitor fees and private donations, and no completion date has been set.
The memorial has its own critics within Lakota communities. Some argue that carving a mountain is itself a desecration, and that Crazy Horse, who avoided being photographed, would not have wanted his likeness displayed. The two monuments together show how differently people can read the same landscape.
Myths and misunderstandings
"Trump officially applied to be added." No. The reporting described an informal inquiry from an aide and a remark Noem recalled. There was no formal proposal from the White House.
"The monument was a New Deal project." Not quite. Carving began in 1927, years before the New Deal, and was authorised by Congress under President Calvin Coolidge in 1929. Federal funding did keep the work going through the Great Depression.
"A fifth face would be a simple addition." The surviving rock is fractured, and engineers have advised against further carving for decades.
Why the story still resonates
The 2020 report was a minor political anecdote, but it touched on lasting questions: who gets honoured in stone, whose land the honour is carved into, and whether a monument can ever be finished when the history beneath it is still disputed. For visitors, Mount Rushmore remains one of the most recognisable landmarks in the United States. For many Lakota, it remains a reminder of a treaty that was not kept.
Sources: The New York Times, 8 August 2020 (original reporting); FOX 5 New York: Trump denies suggesting adding his face to Mount Rushmore; CNN, 2 July 2020 (Harold Frazier statement); Wikipedia: Mount Rushmore; Wikipedia: United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians; Wikipedia: Crazy Horse Memorial.
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