President Donald Trump has unveiled plans to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on the South Lawn of the White House, a move critics are calling a direct rebuke of so-called “woke” politics.
According to The Washington Post, the statue would be placed near E Street, just north of the Ellipse. It would be a replica of a Columbus monument that was dedicated in Baltimore in 1984 by then-President Ronald Reagan and later torn down by protesters on July 4, 2020.
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The Baltimore statue was removed amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by the killing of George Floyd, which led to renewed scrutiny of public monuments associated with colonialism, slavery and racial violence. In the months that followed, numerous statues of Columbus across the country were vandalized or taken down.
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Trump’s interest in erecting new monuments in Washington is not new. During his presidency, he frequently expressed a desire to leave a lasting architectural imprint on the capital, including a controversial proposal to build a “Trump Arch” modeled after Paris’ Arc de Triomphe.
