President Donald Trump — who railed at the Obama-era renaming of Mt. McKinley to what it was called by the indigenous Athabascans, Denali – reportedly asked Alaska's two GOP senators if he should switch it back.
Both Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, were aghast, Alaska Dispatch News reported.
"He looked at me and said, 'I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had – also its name was changed by executive action. Do you want us to reverse that?'" Sullivan revealed during a speech at the Alaska Federation of Natives' annual conference, the newspaper reported.
He said he and Murkowski "jumped over the desk, we said, 'No. No. Don't want to reverse that,'" Sullivan said.
Alaska's junior senator told the president Denali was the name given to the mountain by the Athabascan people more than 10,000 years ago — and his wife is Athabascan.
If "you change that name back now, she's going to be really, really mad," he said he told the president.
"So he's like, 'all right, we won't do that,'" Sullivan told the conference, the newspaper reported.
In 2015, President Barack Obama issued an executive order changing the name to Denali from the one given it by a gold prospector in honor of future President William McKinley of Ohio in 1896.
Trump at the time tweeted his displeasure and an early campaign vow to change it back.
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