August 10, 2020

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem worked to entice Trump to come to Mount Rushmore for her July 4 fireworks extravaganza ever since she got elected. Via the NY TImes:

After all, the president had told her in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?

So last month, when the president arrived in the Black Hills for the star-spangled spectacle he had pined for, Ms. Noem made the most of it.

Introducing Mr. Trump against the floodlit backdrop of his carved predecessors, the governor played to the president’s craving for adulation by noting that in just three days more than 125,000 people had signed up for only 7,500 seats; she likened him to Theodore Roosevelt, a leader who “braves the dangers of the arena”; and she mimicked the president’s rhetoric by scorning protesters who she said were seeking to discredit the country’s founders.

She also rather cannily presented him with a reproduction of Mount Rushmore -- with his face on it.

He grows more like Caligula every day. Maybe he'd leave if we gave it to him?

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