Rejecting the "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children" in his July 3 Mount Rushmore speech, President Donald Trump announced an executive order to celebrate American heroes.
"Under the authority vested in me as president of the United States, I am announcing the creation of a new monument to the giants of our past," Trump said in his Friday night speech in South Dakota. "I am signing an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.
"From this night and from this magnificent place, let us go forward united in our purpose and re-dedicated in our resolve. We will raise the next generation of American patriots. We will write the next thrilling chapter of the American adventure.
"And we will teach our children to know that they live in a land of legends, that nothing can stop them, and that no one can hold them down. They will know that in America, you can do anything, you can be anything, and together, we can achieve anything."
Trump's executive order is an effort to strike back at the destruction of American momuments in an election year. Its location and makeup will be fleshed out by the Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes, and it will be finished by July 4, 2026.
A portion of the order reads:
"The National Garden should be composed of statues, including statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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