Trump installs Christopher Columbus statue on White House grounds

President Donald Trump has installed a statue of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds, his latest effort to remake the presidential campus and celebrate the famed and controversial explorer.

The statue is outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where it is visible from Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 17th Street NW. The White House had considered putting the statue on the South Lawn, The Washington Post reported in February.

The piece is a reconstruction of a statue that President Ronald Reagan unveiled in Baltimore in 1984. After it was dumped into the city’s harbor by protesters in 2020 as a racial reckoning swept the country, a group of Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support from local charities and federal grant funding.

The president has condemned efforts to take down statues of Columbus and other historical figures, saying the removals are an “assault on our collective national memory.”

March 22, 2026 at 5:55 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/22/white-house-christopher-columbus-statue/