DEMOCRATS have accused President Donald Trump of “glorifying white supremacy” for holding a Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
The official Twitter handle for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) tweeted early on Tuesday said Trump attending an event at the iconic memorial was disrespectful to Native Americans.
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“Trump has disrespected Native communities time and again. He’s attempted to limit their voting rights and blocked critical pandemic relief,” the DNC wrote.
“Now he’s holding a rally glorifying white supremacy at Mount Rushmore — a region once sacred to tribal communities.”
The tweet has since been deleted.
The Trump campaign responded on Twitter: “Joe Biden’s Democrat Party says Mount Rushmore and 4th of July celebrations ‘glorify white supremacy.'”
“To stop this insanity, you have to vote on November 3rd.”
Trump is scheduled to attend South Dakota’s fireworks celebration at the national memorial on July 3.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a Republican, said they’ve planned a “large event,” where Trump will deliver remarks to a crowd, which will be capped at 7,500 people.
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Native Americans have been protesting Trump’s trip, as they view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to Indigenous people.
“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 a local activist organization called NDN Collective, has said.
“It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the colonizers who committed genocide.”
Mount Rushmore is a 79-year-old stone monument located in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and the event on July 3 is the first fireworks display at the site since 2009 and is set to include fighter jets.
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The monument includes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
One of the creators of Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, said these four presidents were chosen as “they represented the most important events in the history of the United States.”
The faces were carved into the mountain with dynamite and drills and were chosen by for their leadership during four phases of American development.
Washington led the birth of the US, Jefferson sparked its westward expansion, Lincoln preserved the union and emancipated slaves, and Roosevelt championed industrial innovation.
According to Mount Rushmore historian and writer Tom Griffith, Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
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Trump has shown a fascination with the memorial before, and apparently once joked to Noem in 2018 that it was his dream to be carved into the monument.
Noem had pushed for a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore on July 3.
Some wildfire experts have raised concerns the pyrotechnics could spark fires, especially because the region has seen dry weather this year.
Firefighters called in crews from two other states to help earlier this month as a blaze consumed approximately 150 acres about six miles south of the monument.
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Native Americans — including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache — believe the monument is a desecration to the Black Hills, which they consider sacred.
Lakota people know the area as Paha Sapa — “the heart of everything that is.”
Construction on the monument started in 1927 and was created as a tourist draw for the new fad in vacationing called the road trip.