Trump plans yet another facelift for Washington with giant statue of this president
President Donald Trump called for a towering statue of George Washington to be erected outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the latest in a series of efforts to reshape the nation’s capital and the institutions that tell its history.
The proposal was one of several changes Trump urged the Smithsonian Institution to make ahead of the first president’s 300th birthday in 2032.
In Truth Social posts on Friday evening, the Republican president called on the Smithsonian — an institution he has derided as “woke” and threatened to cut funding from — to install a 30-foot “Colossus statue” of Washington outside the museum.
Trump said the statue should replace “Infinity,” a three-dimensional interpretation of the infinity symbol that now stands there.
“That strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes,” the 80-year-old president wrote. “George Washington does. He is easily America’s Greatest Hero. Without him, our Country and our Freedoms wouldn’t exist.”
Trump also called for an 11-foot statue of Washington to be installed in the museum’s Flag Hall and dedicated Sept. 17, Constitution Day.
He further urged the museum to immediately create a five-year exhibition on Washington’s “Life and Legacy.”
Trump criticized the museum for what he said was a failure to give Washington and other Founding Fathers the “celebration” they deserved during the nation’s 250th anniversary this summer. He said, for example, that the museum does not mention Washington’s 1776 crossing of the Delaware River.
He also accused the Smithsonian of presenting a “twisted” version of U.S. history by focusing on victims of oppression rather than people who overcame it.
“Instead of focusing on ideological activism, the leaders of America’s taxpayer-funded, National History Museum should be focused on telling America’s story—fairly, accurately, and coherently—and there is no better person to start with than George Washington,” Trump concluded.
The president’s posts came three days after Lonnie Bunch, the first Black secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, announced she would step down from the role.
Her announcement followed a White House report published two months ago that attacked Smithsonian officials, particularly within the National Museum of American History, describing them as untrustworthy radical activists. Bunch rejected the report, saying it was not a “fair characterization.”
Trump’s campaign to recast the nation’s historical narrative has extended well beyond the Smithsonian. Since issuing his 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” the administration has pressed for changes across federal institutions, including ordering the removal of so-called “woke” displays at the Bunker Hill Monument in Massachusetts. Recently, the administration also removed a plaque critical of the Confederacy at Arlington National Cemetery.
While the White House has argued it is remedying a distorted account of U.S. history, critics say the administration’s campaign amounts to an effort to whitewash the past.
Trump has also moved quickly to remake the capital’s physical landscape, beginning construction on a large White House ballroom and advancing plans for a 250-foot victory arch along the Potomac River.
