Donald Trump stood beneath four carved presidential faces Friday night in South Dakota, delivering remarks at Mount Rushmore during the nation's 250th anniversary celebration. He arrived at the monument as a man who has successfully attached his name to federal buildings, naval vessels, and a Florida airport. But there is one honor that will forever elude him, no matter his power or desire: a fifth face on that granite mountainside.
Trump has made his ambition known. In 2018, then-Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota revealed that Trump told her it was his "dream" to join Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt atop the monument. Noem said she laughed, but Trump was entirely serious. When she became South Dakota governor in 2020, Noem gave him a 4-foot model of Mount Rushmore that included his likeness.
That same year, reports surfaced that Trump White House aides had inquired about the possibility of adding faces to the monument. Trump denied the inquiry but posted on social media that given his accomplishments, "perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!"
The obstacle is immovable. Literally.
Mount Rushmore's original sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, faced this constraint while carving the monument between 1927 and 1941. He wrote that "the stone limitations are so serious, that I doubt if it would be possible to change the composition, which is fixed, in any way to include a fifth head." Geologists confirm the problem persists today. The mountain simply lacks sufficient usable rock.
Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota acknowledged the geological reality at Friday's event. "The problem is the geologists we've talked to tell us there's simply no good rock on the mountain," he said. Rounds noted that the state had even explored adding Ronald Reagan, but faced the same insurmountable problem.
Congress would need to approve any such addition anyway, making the odds even more remote. But the stone itself is the final arbiter.
Optimism from Trump's allies persists nonetheless. A week after Trump was sworn in, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida introduced legislation calling for his likeness to be carved into the mountain. The bill died in the House Natural Resources Committee and never advanced. South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden said Friday that if space could be found, Trump or Reagan would be worthy candidates, but his statement read more like courtesy than conviction.
Rounds declined to take a position. "I think America decides those things," he said.
Among visitors at the site, opinion split predictably. Mike Pack, 74, of Oregon, who won a lottery to attend the Independence Day event, believed Trump deserved the honor. Wearing a MAGA hat in the event's cafeteria, Pack called Trump "the greatest president we've had in my lifetime" and praised his efforts to unite the country. A George Washington impersonator and an Abraham Lincoln impersonator working the grounds both argued for leaving the monument untouched. "I think they've captured the necessary elements, and any changes might create more trouble than it's worth," the Lincoln impersonator said.
The Mount Rushmore saga reflects a larger theme of Trump's second term: how he will be remembered and by whom. A Kennedy Center board stacked with Trump loyalists added his name to that building, only to have a federal judge order it removed. His administration successfully chiseled his name onto the U.S. Institute of Peace Building in Washington, where it remains. Mount Rushmore, however, represents a different challenge entirely. It is not a matter of political will or judicial decree. The granite itself says no.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Trump's inability to literally reshape Mount Rushmore captures something the courts and Congress can't control: geology remains the ultimate veto power."
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