Donald Trump has repeatedly and far-too-publicly mused over wanting his own face carved into Mount Rushmore. This we knew. Over the weekend, however, we learned that it has gone a bit farther than mere public desire: On Saturday, The New York Times reported that an unnamed Trump White House aide "reached out" to the office of South Dakota's Republican governor to inquire as to what the process of adding new heads to Mount Rushmore might actually be.
Oh dear. Oh, oh dear.
That this was a throwaway line, for the Times, a bit of background information for a piece probing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's political ambitions and over-eager polishing of Trump's shoes, is itself a bit alarming. (We also learn that Noem presented Trump with a "four-foot replica" of Mount Rushmore that indeed had Trump's face added to it, a replica Donald Trump probably intends to be his next wife after Melania finally loses her last remaining patience.)
But let's focus on the phone call. That phone call, which evidently actually happened. About what the process would be for, you know, taking some jackhammers to the mountainside and putting Donald J. Trump's omnipresent mug up there so that Donald Trump's admirers can worship him as Trump imagines they will want to, at some future date. The call. Actually. Happened?
The Times tells us only that an unnamed White House official noted that Mount Rushmore is "a federal, not state monument," which is either an attempt to explain why such a call would be too stupid for the White House to make or, just as likely, a report of what was learned from it. It doesn't answer the most important questions, though. Questions like, who made the call?
Was it Jared Kushner?
It was Jared, wasn't it.
Wait—was it John Barron, a man who sounds exactly like Donald and who has nothing but praise for him?
C'mon, throw us a bone here. Did someone in a South Dakota office have to prepare a memo, outlining the process that might be used to carve new (literal) figureheads on the bluff? Did they patch the call through to the National Park itself and call it a day? Were experts called in?
The Trump White House called the South Dakota governor because somebody in the building needed to know what the process of adding heads would be—a question that would only need to be researched if somebody had been tasked with actually getting the answer. That's not a call you make on a lark. Unless somebody had been drinking.
Wait, were they drinking?
This is a terribly researched article, Times. We need a lot more detail than this.
Anyhoo, the actual answer from the experts was probably very disappointing to The Person Who Demanded An Answer On This One. There are a number of reasons why Donald Trump's vast and empty head will almost assuredly not be added to Mount Rushmore.
1. There's no room. There's simply not enough rock on either side, unless you want to add a President Tinyhead up there.
2. The surrounding rock that does exist isn't stable enough.
3. Attempting to carve a new face has a nontrivial probability of bringing down the Founding Fathers nearest to the proposed Trump head (as in literally, not just in the obvious metaphorical sense).
4. The rock isn't orange enough.
5. The rock pays more taxes than Trump does.
And so on. If "somebody" in the White House were to genuinely order Trump's head be added to Mount Fourheads, it would have to be done with paper mâché, or foam rubber, or a great deal of imported steel, or whatever. That’s not to say someone wouldn’t try, mind you, especially if the resulting structure could also house a lavish head-shaped casino.
Seriously, though, we need to know about this phone call. It's probably not one that was recorded to the Trump "legal department" secret server so we'll never really get to hear it in all its begrudgingly sycophantic glory, but c'mon. Just fill in enough info so that we can act out the rest with hand puppets or something. The world demands to know how that one particular conversation went.
