Inside Trump’s push to bring Christopher Columbus to the White House

President Donald Trump has a midterm message for Italian Americans: Remember what I did for Christopher Columbus.

Trump on Friday will host a celebration of the Italian explorer at the White House, highlighted by his installation of a 13-foot Columbus statue on the presidential grounds, according to multiple people set to attend who spoke with The Washington Post.

The event is timed ahead of Columbus Day, a holiday that Trump vowed to resurrect “from the ashes” after years of historians and politicians rethinking the legacy of Columbus, whose 1492 arrival in the Caribbean set the stage for colonization and enslavement.

“The Italian people are very happy about it. Remember when you go to the voting booths, I reinstated Columbus Day,” Trump said earlier this year.

President Joe Biden moved to celebrate a different holiday — Indigenous Peoples’ Day — on the same day, and some activists have defaced or toppled Columbus statues around the country.

Now, a replica of one of those statues — destroyed by protesters and tossed into Baltimore’s harbor on July 4, 2020 — stands outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House. Trump has hailed its arrival as a high-profile signal of support for Italian Americans.

That statue’s path to the White House, which has not been previously reported in full, drew in a group of Baltimore businessmen who had rescued it from their city’s harbor, a longtime Democratic politician from Cleveland, Trump’s deputies, and an ally on Capitol Hill.

The yearslong effort led to hurt feelings, as advocates jostled for credit from the president — but appears to have delivered some of the validation that Trump craved.

“Italian Americans were insulted by what happened, and this is something that gives attention to our heritage — which we appreciate,” said John A. Pica Jr., a former Democratic Maryland state senator who helped fish pieces of the broken Columbus statue out of the harbor.

Asked about the White House’s planned Columbus celebration, a spokesperson called it “the hottest ticket in town.”

“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said, invoking a famous quote from “The Sopranos.”

Trump has long said he was angry about the defacement and destruction of statues, including those of Columbus, during protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020. But the president singled out efforts to protect a Columbus statue in New York City.

“I love the Italians. They heard they were going to rip down that beautiful Christopher Columbus … all of a sudden they circled that thing,” Trump said at a June 2020 rally. “They didn’t do too well in hurting Christopher did they?”

As Trump took the stage, a similar showdown was brewing in Baltimore’s Little Italy, where activists targeted a Columbus statue that had been installed 36 years earlier by President Ronald Reagan and other leaders.

Baltimore politicians and Italian American groups issued public warnings: “Stay the hell away from it,” said Nino Mangione, a GOP delegate who represented the neighborhood. Unarmed security guards were stationed near the statue, and neighborhood residents vowed to defend it.

It wasn’t enough. On July 4, 2020, masked protesters with ropes yanked the statue from its pedestal. Some held chunks of the shattered marble above their heads in victory, before dumping it into the harbor.

Pica, Mangione, and others fished out the statue’s pieces and began a yearslong campaign to reconstruct it, organizing fundraising calls and securing federal support to help pay for the estimated $150,000 project. They hired an artist, Tilghman Hemsley, to work on a recreation, including a base for the statue that would feature images of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria — the ships that carried Columbus and his crew to the Americas.

They also spoke with Trump administration officials in 2020 about potentially installing the statue on federal land — an effort that withered after Trump lost that year’s election.

Bill Martin, one of the local leaders of the restoration effort, said he had renewed hope after Trump took back the White House in 2024, but couldn’t make a connection.

“I tried all the numbers and names of people that I could find,” said Martin, who spoke with The Washington Post before he died in September. “They were all gone.”

The reconstructed statue ended up in a warehouse on the Eastern Shore.

Commissioned by the Italian American Organizations United, the original statue was one of many placed throughout the country by Italian American groups as a display of ethnic pride in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Columbus became a symbol to Italians that hopefully they would be ultimately accepted to American society, as Columbus had been accepted as a hero,” said Basil Russo, leader of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations and a longtime Cleveland politician.

In recent years, the statues were scrutinized by those who argued Columbus’s voyages to the New World were inextricably linked with the tragedies that followed.

In Boston, a Columbus statue was beheaded overnight. In Minnesota, protesters pulled a bronze Columbus statue from its pedestal outside the State Capitol, then kicked it and danced around it. In Richmond, Va., protesters spray painted and tossed a Columbus statue into a lake. Near the bank, someone placed a sign with a drawing of a tombstone and a message. “Racism,” it read. “You will not be missed.”

For some Italian American leaders, the attacks felt like desecration of their history and heritage.

Trump issued an executive order calling those actions an “assault on our collective national memory” and creating a task force to rebuild monuments. The president was particularly upset by the treatment of Baltimore’s Columbus statue, according to Rep. Michael Rulli (R, Ohio), who spoke with one of Trump’s aides about the situation.

Biden, who entered office the following year, then took another step: He issued a proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Columbus Day.

“Very upsetting,” Russo said. “We completely support the position of the Native American community to have their day of celebration. They can have any day they choose — except Columbus Day.”

Russo said that he initiated an email campaign, filling the inboxes of White House staffers, and ultimately secured a meeting with some Biden officials to discuss the matter.

A lifelong Democrat who considers himself a moderate, Russo said he was willing to work with anyone in his effort to repair Columbus’s legacy. “The art of politics is the ability to achieve acceptable compromises,” he said.

In Trump, he found an ally.

As he sought the presidency in 2024, Trump insisted Columbus should be praised and pledged to celebrate him — a promise he has kept. Trump called Columbus the “original American hero” as he signed a proclamation last year to recognize Columbus Day and the explorer’s discoveries.

“Columbus Day, we’re back, Italians,” Trump said last October. ”Okay? We love the Italians.”

The renewed effort to install a Columbus statue grew out of a dinner last year for Republican lawmakers in the renovated White House Rose Garden. Among the attendees was Rulli, the Ohio congressman, who sat near Vince Haley, director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, and mentioned his own bill to preserve Columbus Day.

A couple weeks later, Rulli said Haley called him with a question: “Could you get us a really cool Christopher Columbus statue?”

After discussing the matter with Haley (who did not respond to requests for comment from The Post), Rulli called Russo, who said he knew there was an effort underway to resurrect Baltimore’s toppled statue.

The Baltimoreans said they weren’t familiar with Russo or his organization, but appreciated his help making a Trump connection.

“We put all this blood, sweat, and tears into this,” Martin said. “We were trying to get the statue to D.C.”

Initially, it seemed the statue could be installed at the White House around Columbus Day 2025 - but the plan was scuttled when Trump went to the Middle East to broker a peace deal between Hamas and Israel.

Pica and Martin said they heard sporadically from Russo in subsequent months, as he assumed the role of go-between. They had several days of advance warning that the statue would be installed on the White House grounds in March 2026.

But when Russo’s group released a statement about the statue’s installation, the Baltimoreans said they were not consulted. They also felt taken aback by their perception that he was taking credit, particularly after the White House sent Russo a letter thanking him and his organization for their “incredible generosity in gifting the Federal Government a beautiful statue of Christopher Columbus.”

Months later, some of the frustrations have been resolved. Pica, who was invited to the White House event this Friday to represent the Baltimore group, also said he was pragmatic about the broader criticism of Columbus. He added that local leaders in Baltimore’s Little Italy were working with ethnic groups to honor other cultures too, including Native Americans.

“We’re sensitive to the way other people look at this,” Pica said. “For good or for bad, Christopher Columbus happens to be the symbol of our heritage.”