Did White House pitch Trump for Mount Rushmore? Sounds like a good idea, says the president

It all happened pretty fast. The New York Times reported that White House aides reached out to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem last year about the process of adding faces to Mount Rushmore. The report was aggregated by other news outlets, including CNN.

The incumbent US president, Donald Trump, was very quick to react to this. He said while this did not happen at all, it was not a bad idea.

Trump, retweeting CNN's headline, called the reports "fake news," though he added that it "sounds like a good idea".

"This is Fake News by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @CNN. Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!" he posted.

Noem, then a congresswoman, said in 2018 that Trump had told her he aspired to have his image on the monument and clarified to her that he was “totally serious".

Trump had, in 2017, at a Youngstown, Ohio, rally, said, "I'd ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore, but here's the problem: If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say 'he believes he should be on Mount Rushmore,’ so I won’t say it, okay? I won’t say it.”

Noem, reportedly, had then greeted Trump when he arrived in the state for his July Fourth celebrations at the monument with a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore that included his face.

The only response to the Times about the story from the White House was to note that Mount Rushmore is a federal, not a state, monument.

p.s. If at all this is true, Twitterverse had a lot to pacify Trump.