On October 11, President Donald Trump used Truth Social to tell supporters that the era of tearing down Christopher Columbus monuments has ended. He hailed the statues’ return one day before Columbus Day, which fell on October 12 this year.
Donald Trump’s Truth Social post criticizes the removal of Christopher Columbus statues
Donald Trump aimed his holiday message at the people he blames for the removals. He said Italian Americans were “forced to suffer” while monuments to the explorer vanished from public squares in recent years.
“Radical Left Dumocrats, Socialists, and Communists rampaged through our cities and towns ripping down almost all of the beautiful statues of Christopher Columbus. Well, those days of plunder are over, and the statues are back, more magnificent than ever,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Columbus’ detractors see the matter differently. They say celebrating him amounts to glorifying the exploitation and genocide of native peoples. However, the post capped a week of Columbus talk from the president. At an October 9 event, he credited his backing among Italian American voters to his defense of the explorer.
Trump even pointed to a new monument on White House grounds. Back in 2020, protesters toppled a Columbus sculpture in Baltimore, and officials assembled a 13-foot replica from the original’s fragments. They placed it in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in March.
“In this administration, we know that Christopher Columbus is – to us he’s a hero,” Trump said. He also urged officials to bring back a Columbus statue that came down outside city hall in Columbus, Ohio, in 2020.
Columbus Day has stayed on the federal calendar for more than 100 years. Still, a number of cities and states now mark the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Supporters of that change say it acknowledges that Native Americans lived across the country long before Columbus arrived. They also point to the death, cultural loss, and land seizures that followed European contact.
Joe Biden became the first president to issue an Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation in 2021. Now, Trump has worked to steer the day back toward Columbus since returning to office.
This story originally appeared on Realitytea
