“Today we pay tribute to the generations of Black legends, champions, warriors, and patriots who helped drive our country forward to greatness,” said President Donald Trump during a Black History Month ceremony in the East Room of the White House. With legendary golfer Tiger Woods at his side, Trump said at a live-televised event: “We pay tribute to these heroes … not just because they are Black heroes but also because they are truly American heroes who inspire all of us.”
The audience applauded ecstatically as Trump rattled off names of various black figures to be honored in a special National Garden of American Heroes: Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Billie Holiday, Coretta Scott King, Kobe Bryant, Martin Luther King Jr. Those are just a few of the long list of notable African Americans to be represented with statues.
This is not a new concept by Trump. He first announced it during an Independence Day celebration at Mt. Rushmore in July 2020. Right away, liberals trashed the idea. The snotty Wikipedia entry describes the project as an attempt “by Trump in the final months of his first term in office … to address conservative cultural grievances.”
That’s the judgment of the liberal elite and their noxious Kultursmog. In truth, Trump’s list of prominent Americans is impressive, eclectic, nonpartisan, and nonideological. It isn’t poisoned by wokeness, DEI, and political correctness, as it would be if corrupt liberals created it. Let’s face it: that’s why liberals are trashing the list. Remember, they always project onto others what they themselves feel. What they want is a list that wallows in liberal/progressive cultural grievances. (RELATED: Fifty Years Battling the Kultursmog)
One motivation of Donald Trump in 2020 was undeniable: He wanted to honor those targeted for cancellation and destruction by the Left’s cultural revolutionaries during the infamous summer of 2020. Note this outrageous characterization in the Wikipedia entry: “In his Mount Rushmore speech announcing the proposal, Trump claimed that ‘Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.’”
Huh? “Trump claimed?” Really? Were there not angry mobs tearing down statues and defacing memorials in 2020?
Even black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were torn down. One of those honored by Trump on his list is Saint Junipero Serra (canonized by Pope Francis), whose statue was no longer safe at a single mission he founded anywhere in the state of California by the summer of 2020.
Seriously, Wikipedia? Do you think Donald Trump imagined this? Are you out of your blooming mind? What America do you live in?
Donald Trump proceeded to issue several executive orders for the Garden of Heroes, including a final one on Jan. 18, 2021, right before he left office. Here’s what the order stated:
In Executive Order 13934 of July 3, 2020 (Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes), I made it the policy of the United States to establish a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden). To begin the process of building this new monument to our country’s greatness, I established the Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes (Task Force) and directed its members to plan for construction of the National Garden….
[T]he gates of a beautiful new garden will soon open to the public where the legends of America’s past will be remembered….
Across this Nation, belief in the greatness and goodness of America has come under attack in recent months and years by a dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity. The heroes of 1776 have been desecrated, with statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin vandalized and toppled. The dead who gave their lives to end slavery and save the Union during the Civil War have been dishonored, [including] monuments to Abraham Lincoln….
The National Garden is America’s answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life. On its grounds, the devastation and discord of the moment will be overcome with abiding love of country and lasting patriotism. This is the American way. When the forces of anti-Americanism have sought to burn, tear down, and destroy, patriots have built, rebuilt, and lifted up. That is our history….
The National Garden will feature a roll call of heroes who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down to all of us.
This splendid idea was killed right away by the woke brigades in May 2021 when their Manchurian candidate, Sleepy Joe Biden, became president. The Left was thrilled with Biden spiking Trump’s executive orders. A disgustingly biased Politico article on Biden rescinding Trump’s order put the words “American heroes” in quotes and listed as examples only baseball player Cy Young, “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, and Kobe Bryant. The article named none of the extensive list of African Americans in my article here. Of course, liberals can’t report details like that because such truths undermine their propaganda and disinformation efforts.
The good news: Now the idea is back, and this time, Trump is pushing it at the start of his administration rather than the end.
As I said, it’s an impressive, eclectic list, and remarkably lengthy. Click the link to the original executive order or look it up on Wikipedia to see for yourself. The Left’s liars will be astonished to discover on Trump’s roster some prominent left-wingers and Democrats, such as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (I think there are more Democrat than Republican presidents on the list), Ruth Bader Ginsburg, left-wing entertainers like Woody Guthrie and Lauren Bacall, and even Religious Left figures such as Dorothy Day.
Indulge me as I share a few favorites: Bishop Fulton Sheen, Andrew Carnegie, Betsy Ross, Frank Capra, Susan B. Anthony, Dwight Eisenhower, Calvin Coolidge, Todd Beamer, Christa McAuliffe, Irving Berlin, William F. Buckley Jr. (with Buckley on the list, I nominate our own R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.!), John Winthrop, Johnny Cash, Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, Roberto Clemente, Clare Boothe Luce (a dear friend of The American Spectator), Elia Kazan, Bob Hope, Lou Gehrig, Henry Ford, Dr. Seuss, Jonas Salk, Nikola Tesla, Shirley Temple, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Elvis, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Alvin York, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Christopher Columbus.
Yes, Columbus. Well, no wonder liberals hate the concept! They want Columbus cancelled. They want him replaced with Indians. Actually, there are native Americans on the list, such as Sitting Bull.
Among the many black Americans honored, I’m pleased to also see Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Medgar Evers, Jesse Owens, and (among still more) a man I’ve written about in books, Augustus Tolton, an ex-slave who became one of America’s first black priests and is currently on a path to possible canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.
I’m also happy to see Amelia Earhart listed. Last summer at The American Spectator, we published a lengthy piece on the fascinating research done by Tim Mellon to locate Earhart’s buried plane. Earhart was an incredible individual who certainly merits this recognition. (READ MORE: One Man’s Search for Amelia Earhart’s Airplane)
Look at the list and let us know in the comments section of anyone you feel ought to be included (I nominate Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire).
All hail the Garden of Heroes! Let the construction begin!
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