Trump against removal of Theodore Roosevelt's statue from outside Museum of Natural History
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The statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side. It stands prominently on a plinth outside the museum's main entrance, overlooking Central Park.
US President Donald Trump on Monday expressed his opposition to the proposal to remove the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City's American Museum of Natural History.
The move was announced by the museum on Sunday and comes amid anti-racism protests across the United States and the world after the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody on May 25 in the United States, reported news agency Reuters.
The statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side. It stands prominently on a plinth outside the museum's main entrance, overlooking Central Park.
Roosevelt, a Republican like Trump, was US president from 1901-1909. Known for his exuberant and daring manner, he carried out antitrust, conservationist and "Square Deal" reforms, and, critics said, took an interventionist approach to foreign policy, including projecting U.S. naval power around the world.
Many critics have said the Roosevelt statue symbolizes racial discrimination and colonial expansion.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city was in favour of the request from the museum to remove the statue because it "depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior."
"Ridiculous, don't do it," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.
(With inputs from Reuters)