Trump installs a statue of Christopher Columbus in the White House that was torn down in protests in 2020: “He is a hero”

In fact, the statue installed this Sunday on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office building, located in the West Wing of the White House and facing Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, is a replica from another that protesters tore down and threw into Baltimore Harbor in 2020.

The work is a reconstruction of a statue that the president Ronald Reagan It opened in Baltimore in 1984. After being torn down amid a wave of protests against racism following the murder of George Floyd, a group of Italian-American businessmen and politicians, in collaboration with local sculptors, They recovered the fragments and rebuilt it with financial support from charities up to $30,000 in federal funds.

“Destroyed on July 4, 2020,” reads a panel attached to the base of the statue. “Resurrected in 2022”. It is also detailed that the sculpture was gifted to the White House last year.

“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a heroand President Trump will ensure that he is honored as such for generations,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement reported by The New York Times.

The protests that spread throughout the United States in 2020 resulted in the demolition of around thirty statues of Columbus. The Genoese admiral has been the focus of revisionist controversies in recent years for his role as a slave owner. It has also been pointed out as the source of the devastation of indigenous peoples.

According to the aforementioned media, the possibility of installing the statue of the discoverer of the New World in the White House arose during the Trump Administration’s preparations to celebrate the 250th anniversary of US independence.

Last year the Republican president defined Columbus as “the original american heroa giant of Western civilization and one of the bravest and most visionary men who have ever walked the face of the earth.” In recent months, the current Government has recovered other sculptures of controversial figures and distributed them around the grounds of the White House.