Former President Donald Trump keeps a sculpture in his office of an altered Mount Rushmore, which included his face besides other presidents of the United States.

New photos of Trump at Mar-a-Lago showed the sculpture on a lower shelf, Business Insider reported. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem reportedly gave it in 2020 at an Independence Day event at the real Mount Rushmore.

The original Mount Rushmore shows the faces of former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. In the sculpture, Trump is next to Lincoln.

The bronze sculpture was seen in photos of Donald Trump with recently acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse and a Taekwondo administrator, showing the statue below a distinctive red MAGA cap and other memorabilia. Independent reported that the sculpture cost $1,100.

 In 2018, Noem reportedly said that she and the former president had discussed the historic landmark during their first meeting in the Oval Office. At the time, Trump said it was his "dream" to have his face added.

Noem first thought that the former president was joking and started laughing. But she noted that Trump was not laughing, "so he was totally serious."

In 2017, Donald Trump raised the prospect of placing himself on Mount Rushmore at a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio. In April, he said if he had been a Democrat, he would already be immortalized on Mount Rushmore.

Who Created the Mount Rushmore Sculpture With Donald Trump's Face Added?

Sculptors Lee Leuning and Sherri Treeby created the work for Noem, The Sun reported. They were both Trump supporters and voted for him in 2016, 2021, and they plan to vote for him in 2024.

Heuning told The Daily Beast that it was "pretty cool," and good to see that the statute was on display because often it "ends up in a closet."

It was earlier reported that a Trump admin official contacted the South Dakota governor's office to ask about the process of adding additional presidents to Mount Rushmore.

However, his team pushed back, and the former president called it "fake news." Despite that, Donald Trump earlier tweeted that it "sounds like a good idea" to him.

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Presidents in Mount Rushmore

The idea behind the sculpture in the Black Hills was first proposed in 1923 by South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson.

According to Britannica, Robinson has envisioned creating likenesses of famous Native American and American Old West personalities on a needlelike rock formation.

An American sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, said that the first site was too eroded and unstable and chose nearby Mount Rushmore instead.

Borglum proposed that the four heads in the sculpture show the first 150 years of the United States and the person symbolizing those.

Washington was included to represent the country's founding; Jefferson for its expansion across the continent; Roosevelt for its development domestically and as a global power; and Lincoln for its preservation through the ordeal of civil war.

The sculpting progress was hampered by periodic funding shortfalls, such as design issues. The project was also impeded after Borglum died in March 1941, before the sculpture was finished.

Borglum's son, Lincoln, took over the final workings of the project. It was completed in October 1941.

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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