The Republican Attorneys General Association has three words for those who have set their sights on destroying Mount Rushmore: Stop the Madness.
In a public service announcement titled “Erasing History,” the organization addresses the “cancel culture” phenomenon that has destroyed statues, monuments, and even the livelihoods of those deemed beyond the pale of moral righteousness—or simply insufficiently woke. The video strings together footage of statues of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln being torn down or defaced and, one by one, wipes their faces from Mount Rushmore.
“Defend the rule of law,” the video urges.
The PSA comes two days before President Trump’s scheduled visit to the memorial in honor of Independence Day and a day after the DNC posted a since-deleted tweet that the president’s visit amounted to “holding a rally glorifying white supremacy.”
Those calling for the removal of the landmark cite Washington and Jefferson’s slaveholding past, Lincoln’s decision to execute 38 Dakota men following the massacre of white civilians, and antagonistic comments toward Native Americans that Roosevelt reportedly expressed.
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"Visitors look upon the faces of those presidents and extol the virtues that they believe make America the country it is today," Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier said in a statement. “The United States of America wishes for all of us to be citizens and a family of their republic yet when they get bored of looking at those faces, we are left looking at our molesters.”
As far as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is concerned, however, Mount Rushmore isn't going anywhere.
“This is a national monument and the more we focus on the flaws of these men that are on our mountain," Noem said in a Fox interview, "the less likely we are to recognize the virtues and the lessons we can learn from their lives."
