The New York Times has published an article attempting to paint Mount Rushmore, the iconic American landmark, as racist in every way, from the historical figures depicted to the land upon which it is built, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Times article, “How Mount Rushmore Became Mount Rushmore,” criticizes all four presidents depicted (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) by calling Washington and Jefferson slave-owners, falsely accusing Roosevelt of being a racist, and claiming that Lincoln didn’t do enough to free the slaves.
The article goes further by attacking the man who sculpted the monument, Gutzon Borglum, due to his previous work on several Confederate memorials. It also claims that Rushmore was built on Indian land.
The attack comes just one day before President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the historic monument for an early celebration of the 4th of July. As such, the far-left has stepped up rhetorical attacks on the landmark, including a radical Indian leader’s calls for the monument to be destroyed. The Democratic National Committee’s official Twitter account posted a tweet declaring that the 4th of July was a celebration of “white supremacy,” with the backlash being so strong that the DNC eventually deleted the tweet.
Mount Rushmore is by far the largest monument to come under attack by the Left in its ongoing crusade to tear down America’s monuments. The Trump Administration has begun pushing back on this effort, with the president signing an executive order to fast-track the process by which the federal government can pursue, arrest, and prosecute anyone involved in the vandalism or destruction of a federal monument.
There have been multiple arrests, and it was announced on Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security had created a special task force, the Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT), aimed specifically at deploying DHS special units across the country to protect monuments from vandalism over the coming Independence Day weekend.