President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to build new American monuments has sparked immediate calls from supporters for former President Ronald Reagan to be the first figure honored in the initiative.
“America is going to start building monuments to our great heroes and heroines again!!!” Trump posted on social media Thursday, prompting a wave of social media responses favoring Reagan as the inaugural honoree.
X user Eric Daugherty shared the following image —
Trump’s announcement revives a 2020 executive order that proposed creating a “National Garden of American Heroes,” which he originally planned to open by July 4, 2026.
That project, announced during a speech at Mount Rushmore, would have featured 30 “lifelike or realistic” statues of figures ranging from American presidents to civil rights leaders.
President Joe Biden’s administration did not follow through with the executive order.
“These statues are silent teachers in solid form of stone and metal,” Trump’s 2020 executive order stated. The garden was meant to be located “on a site of natural beauty” near a major population center.
The original list of honorees included historic figures such as Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Billy Graham, Jackie Robinson, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Trump promised then that “those great names are going to be up there, and they’re never coming down.”
The 2020 initiative, which tasked Interior Secretary David Bernhardt with leading an interagency task force, came amid the Black Lives Matter riots where protesters targeted, vandalized, and destroyed many statues of American heroes such as that of the 54th Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, and George Washington.
Below are two photos, the first photo is the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial that got wrecked during the recent protests and the 2nd photo is of the….Wait for it….
54th REGIMENT!!! 🤦🏻♂️ #AntifaTerrorists pic.twitter.com/xYOs75l0Ly
— John Regan 🇺🇸🇮🇪🏴 (@jregan11) June 5, 2020
Flashback to when the mob in San Francisco took down the statue of Ulysses S Grant, the Union general who won the civil war and freed the slaves. pic.twitter.com/5Yp5wTAr8z
— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) November 2, 2024
Protesters in northeast Portland have pulled down a statue of George Washington pic.twitter.com/5tOzAVbUp5
— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) June 19, 2020
Trump has positioned himself as a defender of historical statues, threatening 10-year prison sentences for vandals.
Trump’s renewed promise comes as he prepares to return to the White House, though he has not specified whether he plans to resurrect the original National Garden proposal or pursue a different monument-building strategy.