President Donald Trump is planning to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds, according to three people with knowledge of the pending move, in his latest effort to remake the presidential campus and celebrate the famed and controversial explorer.
The statue is set to be located on the south side of the grounds, by E Street and north of the Ellipse, two of the people said, although they cautioned that plans could change. The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak on private discussions. The piece is a reconstruction of a statue unveiled in Baltimore by then-President Ronald Reagan and dumped in the city’s harbor by protesters in 2020 as a racial reckoning swept the country.
A group of Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the destroyed pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support from local charities and federal grant funding.
Bill Martin, an Italian American businessman who helped recover the remnants of the original sculpture and organize a campaign to rebuild it, said the statue is expected to be transferred from a warehouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the Trump administration in coming weeks.
The White House declined to comment on its plans but praised the 15th-century explorer.
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”
As Columbus statues became something of a battleground in the broader tug-of-war over the nation’s history, Trump has repeatedly positioned himself as a staunch defender of a legacy he says has been dishonored by “left-wing arsonists.”
Trump included Columbus in a 2021 executive order of historical figures for his proposed National Garden of American Heroes, showcasing those who embody “the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love.”
The Italian explorer is long celebrated for his voyage in 1492 to the Americas, opening up trade routes with Europe and setting the stage for colonization and enslavement. Some U.S. states now recognize Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day; Joe Biden in 2021 became the first president to mark the holiday.
Trump campaigned in 2024 on promises to celebrate Columbus Day, and in October he signed a presidential proclamation to recognize Columbus as “the original American hero” and mark the annual holiday.
“We’re back, Italians. Okay? We love the Italians,” Trump said after signing the proclamation. He later said the move should help the Republican Party in the upcoming midterm elections.
“The Italian people are very happy about it. Remember when you go to the voting booths, I reinstated Columbus Day,” Trump told reporters at the White House last month.
Meanwhile, his administration pushes to scrub federal institutions of “corrosive ideology” recognizing historical sexism and racism and to leave its mark on the nation’s capital in a sweeping effort that has drawn complaints and lawsuits. The president rapidly demolished the East Wing annex last year to build his planned $400 million ballroom; paved over the Rose Garden to make room for a patio; and has imposed his vision on numerous internal fixtures and rooms, including the Lincoln Bathroom.
Historic preservationists have called on Trump to go through federal review panels before making further changes to the White House grounds.
In his first term, Trump decried the destruction of Columbus statues across the country. After administration officials learned about efforts in 2020 to rescue and preserve Baltimore’s statue, they asked to obtain it for possible installation on federal grounds, but the statue was not yet ready, said Martin, the businessman.
Martin estimated that he and his allies raised and spent more than $100,000 for their recovery and restoration efforts, which he said represented inspiration to the Italian American community.
“It’s not about Columbus ‘discovering America’ … it’s about the Italian immigrants who came here and looked to Columbus as a hero,” Martin said.
Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates, also was involved in efforts to recover the statue, and he praised Trump’s plan to install it at the White House.
“It is such an honor for the Italian American community,” Mangione wrote in an email. “This proves that gangs, thugs, and people of that ilk don’t control things by mob rule. … in America the people rule and our voices are heard.”
Columbus’s planned D.C. arrival comes on the heels of the administration’s reinstallation last October of a Confederate general that protesters had toppled and torched five years prior.
Albert Pike is now back on his plinth in a small federal park about a mile east of the White House, the only Confederate leader memorialized with an outdoor statue in Washington.
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