Got his crowd and peddled his fiction

Robin Givhan
July 4, 2020 at 1:03 AM EDT

... Mount Rushmore is painfully complex — much like America itself. The faces of four revered, but profoundly flawed, presidents were carved into the stone by a talented sculptor who sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. The majestic monument — a testament to human tenacity — scars land considered sacred by Native Americans.

... the president is not a man of complexity and nuance. He is a man who sees things in gloriously righteous white and suspicious, dangerous black ... The president had orchestrated a rally — a place where he could wade into a warm embrace of approval ...

He promised to save the monuments ... And why not? It’s so much easier to cordon off a statue, to surround it with police officers, than it is to come to terms with the blood and the glory, the cruelty and good will that built this country and that haunts it ...

Trump awkwardly read through what might best be described as Wikipedia entries on the four presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore: Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. And then he rattled off his familiar refrains: raging against athletes who take a knee to protest racial injustice, recommitting to building his wall, promising to put America first ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/07/04/trump-got-his-crowd-his-fireworks-peddled-his-fiction/