‘Someone Who Thinks He’s King’: Donald Trump Under Fire After Viral Post Shows Mount Goldx Rushmore Sculpture on Display Featuring Trump’s Face on Display at Mar-a-Lago
Garish gold statues featuring Donald Trump’s visage are nothing new at the president’s home away from home.
The internet is buzzing over an image of a gold Mount Rushmore sculpture on display at Mar-a-Lago, with Trump’s head added to the right of Lincoln. As one commenter on Reddit noted, “Even the other presidents look irritated and disgusted.”
Just last month, a goat with gold hooves, horn and tail, covered in $100 “Trump bills” that replace “In God We Trust” with “In Trump We Trust,” was on display at the president’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, conjuring memories of the Biblical story of the golden calf, constructed by Aaron while Moses was on Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God.
A Golden Mount Rushmore statue with Trump’s head on it on display at Mar-A-Lago
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Fortunately, the golden goat is unlikely to become a national monument. But adding Trump to Mount Rushmore has some support. A recent ad from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which gave us Project 2025, showed Trump on Mount Rushmore, with a voiceover praising the president for “doing what he said he would do.”
On X, Heritage President Kevin Roberts wrote this month, “Six weeks in, President Trump has done more than some presidents manage in a lifetime — securing the border, crushing wokeness, and putting America First. Tonight’s Joint Address is a reminder: the American Dream is alive. A new Golden Era is just beginning.”
And Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has introduced a bill that would carve Trump’s face into the South Dakota mountainside alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
According to the proposed legislation, Trump’s face would be added, rather than replacing an existing one. It also doesn’t specify where exactly Trump’s face would go; surely, the middle is a logistical impossibility, so presumably, it would either be to Washington’s left or Lincoln’s right. 
“President Trump’s bold leadership and steadfast dedication to America’s greatness have cemented his place in history,” Luna said in a press release. “Mount Rushmore, a timeless symbol of our nation’s freedom and strength, deserves to reflect his towering legacy – a legacy further solidified by the powerful start to his second term.”
One problem quipped comedian Seth Myers: “You must not know Trump very well if you expect him to share a mountain with four other guys.”
Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and unveiled in 1941, the monument ranks among America’s most iconic landmarks. The facade depicts the giant faces of four presidents whom, according to a 2021 C-SPAN presidential historians survey, rank first (Lincoln), second (Washington), fourth (Roosevelt) and seventh (Jefferson).
Trump visited Mount Rushmore on Independence Day in 2020. Then-South Dakota Gov. Kritsi Noem, now Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Secretary, presented Trump with the figurine now on display at Mar-a-Lago.
But not everyone took Noem’s gift as a joke. South Dakota’s at-large Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) introduced the Mount Rushmore Protection Act, which would have prevented the monument’s alteration in any significant way, whether by adding a face or removing one (some have called for Washington and Jefferson to be scrubbed from the landmark because they owned slaves).
The bill attracted 38 co-sponsors but never received a committee vote, according to The Fulcrum. Rep. Johnson subsequently introduced the bill in 2022 and 2023, with the latter version receiving a hearing before the House Natural Resource Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Lands. But no votes have been taken.
Naturally, Trump supports the idea. The New York Times reported that White House aides contacted Noem’s office in 2020, inquiring about the process for potentially adding one or more faces to the monument. Trump denied the report on X but added, “based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3½ years, perhaps more than any other presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!”
However, critics on the left are not buying into the idea.
‘I’m so confused. This is dictator-like behavior… straight up Kim Jong-un shit. Displays like this, along with daily efforts to tear down our constitution as we know it. Yet, half of this damn county is just blind to it? They’re OK with having someone who thinks he’s king? WTF is wrong with people?
But in the end, it’s unlikely to happen. All of the other presidents were dead when the monument was unveiled. Such honors are rarely given to living political figures.
And aesthetically, the monument is finished.
“The rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving,” Mount Rushmore’s Chief of Interpretation and Education Maureen McGee-Ballinger told a South Dakota newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
A gold coating would also seem to betray the monument’s integrity.