Trump Pledges To Bring Columbus Day Back “From The Ashes”

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said on April 27 that he would bring Columbus Day back “from the ashes,” as he accused the Democrats of tarnishing the reputation of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.

Columbus Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the second Monday of October to honor Italian-Americans and Christopher Columbus, whose 1492 expedition from Spain reached the Caribbean and marked the beginning of sustained European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

On Oct. 8, 2021, then-President Joe Biden issued two separate presidential proclamations commemorating both Indigenous People’s Day and Columbus Day.

Trump said that he plans to commemorate Columbus Day “under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before,” suggesting that he won’t follow Biden’s practice.

“I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes. The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,” Trump stated on Truth Social.

“They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all!”

The federal holiday was still known as Columbus Day during Biden’s term, but also as Indigenous Peoples Day. 

That was a longtime goal of activists who wanted to shift the focus from commemorating Columbus’ navigation to the Americas to his and his successors’ exploitation of the indigenous people he encountered there.

In his 2021 Columbus Day proclamation, Biden said he acknowledged “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

Biden said it should serve as a reflection of “the courage and contributions of Italian Americans throughout the generations,” as well as “the dignity and resilience of Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

During his first term, Trump stated in a 2020 proclamation that “radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy” amid reports of vandalism targeting statues of the Italian explorer in some states.

“These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions,” he stated. 

“Rather than learn from our history, this radical ideology and its adherents seek to revise it, deprive it of any splendor, and mark it as inherently sinister.”

There have been reports of Columbus statues being vandalized in several states in recent years. 

In October 2019, vandals threw red paint and sprayed graffiti on two Columbus statues in Rhode Island and California.