Donald Trump is planning to erect a statue of Christopher Columbus—a man who initiated the transatlantic slave trade and never actually set foot on continental U.S. soil—outside the White House. And he’s doing it during Black History Month.
WHAT’S GOING ON: According to a Washington Post exclusive, the statue will likely be placed on the south side of the White House grounds, close to E Street. But here’s where it gets even more ridiculous: the statue is being reassembled from remnants of a Reagan-era piece that was originally erected in Baltimore in 1984—and then torn down by protesters in 2020 and dumped into the city’s harbor.
Those fragments have been stitched back together with funding from a group of Italian American businessmen and politicians, along with local charities and federal grant money. Yes, your tax dollars may have helped resurrect a monument to colonialism.
OF COURSE: The White House refused to comment on the specific plan but made its position crystal clear. “In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”
THE DETAILS: Columbus has been officially celebrated in the U.S. since 1934, when FDR designated Columbus Day a national holiday in an attempt to fold Italian American immigrants into early American history. The problem? Columbus never landed in what is now the United States. His four voyages all ended up in the Caribbean, where he enslaved Indigenous people and kickstarted centuries of brutal colonization.
Columbus’s legacy became hotly contested in 2020 amid nationwide racial justice protests. In 2021, President Biden recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day, marking a federal shift away from glorifying the colonizer.
Trump campaigned, in part, on bringing Columbus Day back. He signed a proclamation in October to do just that. “We’re back, Italians. OK? We love the Italians,” Trump said at the time.
WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t just about a statue. Trump is explicitly framing this as an electoral play. Last month, he claimed resurrecting Columbus’s “positive memory” could win over Italian Americans in future elections. “The Italian people are very happy about it. Remember when you go to the voting booths, I reinstated Columbus Day,” he said.
So let’s be clear about what’s happening here: The president is installing a monument to a violent slaver on White House grounds—during Black History Month—as a calculated political gesture to court a voting bloc. The timing is either spectacularly tone-deaf or deliberately provocative. Knowing this administration, it’s probably both.