in World News Donald Trump Heads to South Dakota Three Years After Famous Mount Rushmore Speech
by Hannah Bleau
Former President Donald Trump is heading to South Dakota as the Republican frontrunner on Friday — a significant move, as he last stopped there in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, defying critics and delivering a speech at Mount Rushmore.
Trump is set to visit Rapid City, South Dakota, on Friday, attending what has been described as a fundraiser for the state Republican Party.
Chairperson of the South Dakota GOP John Wiik said of the attendance of high-profile figures such as Trump, “They’re doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.”
The former president’s stop in the state is politically significant, as it is the first time he is returning as a candidate since his pivotal Mount Rushmore speech in July 2020, the day before Independence Day in the midst of the pandemic, when fear largely reigned. He used the speech to articulate American exceptionalism while providing a history lesson on some of the great men who established the country as we know it today.
“They were American giants in full flesh and blood. Gallant men, whose intrepid deeds unleashed the greatest leap of human advancement the world has ever known,” Trump said before detailing the contributions of the men whose likenesses are carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.