President Donald Trump has been on a mission since retaking office to reverse and/or end what he considers diversity, equity, and inclusion policies or “woke ideology.”
That includes championing controversial explorer and colonizer Christopher Columbus.
At the White House Friday ahead of Columbus Day on Monday, Oct. 12, Trump issued a Columbus Day proclamation. In it, the president praises the sailor’s “valor, adventure, and ingenuity.”
The proclamation also states that Columbus’ 1492 voyage “set in motion the forces that would culminate in the miracle of July 4, 1776.”
At the event in the East Room, Trump heralded the Italian as a “hero” and took credit for what he called a “resurrected Christopher Columbus.”
He’s trying to clean up Columbus’ tarnished image.
Before a crowd of MAGA faithful, Trump first stated that, to him and his administration, the explorer is a “hero.”
“He’s a hero,” the president repeated as the room erupted in applause.
He then slammed the press, calling it “the fake news” for covering his event and blaming it for drawing attention to Columbus’ real legacy in the Americas.
“I feel that I, with some of the people in this room, we resurrected Christopher Columbus,” Trump crowed as the crowd enthusiastically clapped in approval.
“I mean, you couldn’t even say his name. If you said his name, they’d start writing stories about you like you’re some kind of an evil,” the president whined.
“Now we’re very proud, and we have a statue of Christopher Columbus in front of one of the most important buildings in Washington, the executive office building right across the street, the Eisenhower Building, and everyone loves it,” he insisted.
Trump was referring there to a marble statue he had placed on the White House grounds near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It’s a replica of a Columbus statue that protesters tore down in Baltimore and threw into the harbor after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Social media soundly criticized Trump, with disgusted commenters wondering again about his mental health.
“This disturbed man really thinks he’s Jesus,” an irritated X user stated.
Another hilariously wrote, “In today’s episode of Donald Trump saves America from Donald Trump ….”
Others chimed in.
“What is he doing? This is insanity.”This X user agreed, “What planet is he living on?”
Honoring Columbus is both divisive and controversial among some Americans, especially Native Americans.
For hundreds of years, U.S. schools have taught children that Columbus discovered America. But of course, he could not have “discovered” a land where hundreds of tribes already lived, spread out across the continent.
After setting off from Spain, Columbus first made landfall in the Americas in 1492, his first of four voyages to the New World.
The early Spanish colonizers accompanying Columbus never set foot in North America, but they did enslave, wreak violence on, and spread devastating diseases to the indigenous peoples they encountered on the Caribbean islands those explorers invaded.
In 1990, South Dakota became the first state to recognize Native Americans’ Day, or Indigenous Peoples Day, and more than a dozen other states celebrate it too, on Oct. 7.