Donald Trump Asked If He Could Be Added To Mount Rushmore - Yes, REALLY!

Donald Trump REALLY wants to be on Mount Rushmore! And he’s asked multiple times!

Back in 2018, then-South Dakota Republican Congresswoman Kristi Noem recalled a story about meeting President Trump for the first time, and having him ask her (dead-serious) about whether she’d be able to add his face up to go alongside the other four Presidents on the state’s iconic Mount Rushmore sculpture. She thought he was joking at first, before immediately realizing he was serious, and that it was his “dream” to be up there.

Noem recalled the moment in a 2018 interview that is once again making the rounds today after a New York Times report confirmed Trump’s continued desire to place himself up on the sculpture during his Presidency. According to The Intelligencer, the Congresswoman said of her meeting with Trump (below):

“He said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand.’ 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.”

What. The. F**k?!?!

That would’ve been funny enough as a footnote lost to history, if not for the fact that on Saturday, the New York Times published a sourced report about how Vice President Mike Pence sees Noem — who is now the Governor of South Dakota — as a threat to his VP gig, should Trump win re-election. To that end, during Pence’s concerned worrying about Noem’s ascension within the Republican Party, the Times notes (below):

“A White House aide reached out to the governor [Noem]’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?”

Holy s**t… he REALLY wants to be on Mount Rushmore.

It gets worse, too: back over the July 4 holiday weekend, Trump traveled to South Dakota and gave an infamously divisive speech in front of Mount Rushmore. During the trip, Noem attempted to grant the President’s wish with a miniature replica of the sculpture with The Donald included:

“In private, the efforts to charm Mr. Trump were more pointed, according to a person familiar with the episode: Ms. Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore that included a fifth presidential likeness: his.”

Of course…

The funny thing is there is literally NO room left to add anybody’s likeness to the sculpture, Trump or otherwise! Maureen McGee-Ballinger, the public information officer for the tourist attraction, said workers get asked daily whether any President can be added, and they’ve heard people suggesting many through the years: Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and even Barack Obama.

But as McGee-Ballinger notes, there’s nowhere for a new president to go:

“There is no more carvable space up on the sculpture. When you are looking on the sculpture, it appears there might be some space on the left next to Washington or right next to Lincoln. You are either looking at the rock that is beyond the sculpture (on the right), which is an optical illusion, or on the left, that is not carvable.”

Well then!

Still, based on Trump’s tweets from just a couple days ago, it appears the dream continues to live on, realistic or not: