President Trump will travel to Mount Rushmore on Friday to mark the start of the Independence Day weekend with a fireworks display, at a time of vigorous national debate over United States history, and when the Dakota landmark of South is under renewed scrutiny by activists.
Trump is expected to speak at the event, and more than 7,000 tickets have been distributed for people to see. It is likely to be full of supporters of the president, but it will also attract protesters.
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The ceremony faces double controversy as the latest Trump event that critics say puts people at risk, unnecessarily, of spreading the coronavirus. Trump held a rally last month in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and local officials and residents expressed fear that he may act as a super-spread of the virus.
Governor Kristi Noem has said that social distancing and masks will be optional, although masks will be provided and an assessment of attendees’ body temperature will be conducted.
“The masks will be available in the first place. They are not necessary, but people will be able to have them if they don’t have one when they come,” he said. “And I think we have done several things to mitigate the spread of COVID,” South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “As you probably know, our state has not mandated these various policies that other states have. And I think we are very proud of that and our numbers have been kept low.”
But Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender expressed skepticism about the precautions, arguing that attendees “probably won’t be disqualified themselves because they developed cough the day or the day before.”
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Meanwhile, the leaders of the Native American tribes have expressed concern about the risk of coronavirus and have renewed their complaints that the monument itself is on land taken from the Lakota people. Some are expected to be part of the protests near the milestone.
“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that is still alive and well in today’s society,” Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and president of a local activist organization called the NDN Collective, told The Associated Press. “It is an injustice to actively steal the lands of indigenous peoples and then carve the white faces of the colonizers who committed genocide.”
It is not a new cause. More than a century after its construction, the site was occupied by a group of Native Americans protesting against treaty violations. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that more than $ 100 million should be given in compensation to eight tribes.
But those protests received renewed energy this year amid a backlash against national monuments by left-wing activists in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Initially, the protests were directed at Confederate generals and figures who had supported slavery, but quickly turned into a movement that has sought to remove or tear down monuments to previous presidents, including Lincoln and Jefferson, both carved out of Mount Rushmore. .
It is a movement that has also begun to move into the mainstream. The Democratic National Committee this week removed a tweet that accused Trump of “glorifying white supremacy” by going to Mount Rushmore.
“Trump has disrespected native communities over and over again,” the Democrats wrote. “He tried to limit his voting rights and blocked relief from the critical pandemic. He is now organizing a rally glorifying white supremacy on Mount Rushmore, a region that was once sacred to tribal communities.”
A wave of anti-monument fervor is expected this weekend, and the Trump administration has taken a series of dramatic steps to protect the monuments from violence and vandalism, including sending a unit’s Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT) Federal special across the country.
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Meanwhile, Trump has expressed his enthusiasm for the event and the holiday weekend.
“They used to do it many years ago, and for some reason they couldn’t or weren’t allowed to,” he said. “They just weren’t allowed to do it, and I opened it up and we’re going to have a tremendous July 3rd and then we’ll be back here, celebrating July 4th in Washington, DC”
Julia Musto of Fox News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
