President Trump concluded his speech on Friday night at Mount Rushmore by announcing that he signed an executive order to create a “National Garden of American Heroes.”
The president described the garden as a “great outdoor park that will feature the statues of the best Americans ever to exist.”
An interagency task force will search for potential sites, and the Department of the Interior will provide funding for the garden, which should be open before July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The executive order says: “The National Garden must be made up of statues, including statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington and Orville, and Wilbur Wright. “
The order states that “no one will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying.”
The order also marks the recent fall and vandalism of historical monuments across the country amid protests of racial injustice.
Many of the target statues involved Confederate military heroes and historical figures who owned slaves or caused harm to Native Americans.
“My Administration will not carry out an assault on our collective national memory,” says the order.
“In the face of such acts of destruction, it is our responsibility as Americans to stand firm against this violence and peacefully transmit our great national history to future generations through newly commissioned monuments to American heroes.”
Trump, in his pre-fireworks show speech, expressed similar sentiments, criticizing what he called the “angry mobs” who “are trying to tear down the statues of our founders.”
.
