The New York Times has faced intense backlash over its report about the history of Mount Rushmore.
Ahead of President Trump’s scheduled Fourth of July celebration at the national monument, the Times ran a report with the headline “How Mount Rushmore Became Mount Rushmore,” which outlined how the upcoming event “invited even more scrutiny” regarding the landmark’s history.
Along with the criticisms George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt have faced in recent weeks, the Times reported the condemnation from Native Americans since the monument was built on indigenous land. It also noted how the sculptor Gutzon Borglum had “strong bonds with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan” and has a documented history of espousing white supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.
However, it was a tweet from the Times that summarized an unflattering depiction of Mount Rushmore that really raised eyebrows on social media.
DEMS TWEET THEN DELETE POST LINKING TRUMP’S MT. RUSHMORE EVENT TO ‘GLORIFYING WHITE SUPREMACY’
“Mount Rushmore was built on land that belonged to the Lakota tribe and sculpted by a man who had strong bonds with the Ku Klux Klan. It features the faces of 2 U.S. presidents who were slaveholders,” the Times wrote.
Critics blasted the Times as being the “woke police,” with the national monument as its latest target.
“OMG the woke police are going all in on Mount Rushmore. They’re really doing it. These people are insane,” Donald Trump Jr. reacted.
“Now, the woke mob at the New York Times is coming after Mount Rushmore. If we give this mob an inch, they’ll take a mile,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., similarly said.
“The New York Times building is located on land the Dutch colonists swindled from the native population They must abandon their stolen land and donate the proceeds to BLM,” radio host Buck Sexton wrote.
“@NYTIMES pushes for destruction of Mt. Rushmore,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton asserted.
“Here it comes… Not long now and we’ll see very serious NYT columnists call for the dynamiting of Mount Rushmore,” The Federalist political editor John Daniel Davidson predicted.
On Monday, the DNC was under fire for linking Trump’s upcoming event at Mount Rushmore to “glorifying white supremacy.”
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“Trump has disrespected Native communities time and again,” The Democrats wrote on Twitter. “He’s attempted to limit their voting rights and blocked critical pandemic relief. Now he’s holding a rally glorifying white supremacy at Mount Rushmore- a region once sacred to tribal communities.”
The tweet was later deleted amid backlash.
