President Donald Trump plans to visit Mount Rushmore for a fireworks show on July 3, despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to multiple reports on Twitter.
“We’re getting them at the great monument, we’re getting them, I got fireworks, for 20 years or something it hasn’t been allowed for environmental reasons, you believe that one, it’s all stone. So I’m trying to say where’s the environmental reason? Anyway I got it approved so I’m going to go there on July 3rd, and they’re gonna have the big fireworks,” Trump told podcast host Dan Bongino on Friday, according to CNN.
The Week reports: Earlier this week, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) confirmed the Independence Day celebration would go forward. “We’re excited that this will be happening at Mount Rushmore,” Noem said, as reported by CNN. “We’ve been working on this for quite some time.” Trump had first floated the idea of holding “your first big fireworks display at Mount Rushmore” back in January, although firework shows have been held at the monument in the past only to be discontinued in 2009 over environmental concerns. Trump has waved off such worries by saying “what can burn? It’s stone.” … Trump has been obsessed with the South Dakota monument — which depicts former presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson — for quite some time. “I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime, we have Mount Rushmore,'” Noem recalled in a 2018 interview. “And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’ I started laughing. He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”
Back in 2017, Trump suggested during a rally that his face will one day be on the monument.
“I’d ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore, but, no — here’s the problem: If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake-news media will say, ‘He believes he should be on Mount Rushmore!’ ” Trump said. “So I won’t say it, OK? I won’t say.”
