Trump Boasts About Honoring Italian-Americans in Bizarre Post About Christopher Columbus

Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Screenshot); Donald Trump (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump made an odd ode to Italian Americans more than a month before Columbus Day with a post recognizing a statue of the explorer he installed in Washington D.C. in March.

The statue in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House, is a copy of one that was thrown into Baltimore’s harbor in 2020, during nationwide protests, according to the Associated Press.

Trump posted a nighttime shot of the statue on Truth Social Monday evening:

Christopher Columbus proudly stands at the entrance to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, directly adjacent to the White House, one of the most important Entrances to a Building in D.C. I did this in Honor of the Italian American Community — Industrious, brilliant, wonderful people. It is something that they have greatly appreciated! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The statue that stood in Baltimore was knocked down and then tossed into the city’s Inner Harbor on July 4, 2020, amid the George Floyd protests that rocked the nation for weeks. Statues of the explorer were being targeted amid the upheaval and the contention that Columbus brought genocide with his discovery of the West.

Ahead of the replica statue’s installation in the nation’s capital more than six months ago, White House spokesman Davis Ingle invoked the Sopranos while discussing the topic.

“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” Ingle told The Washington Post at the time. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”

Trump has long been a proponent of the traditional view of Columbus as a hero who discovered America in 1492, when he sailed the ocean blue.

In October 2025, he signed a proclamation to recognize Columbus Day each October, declaring, “We’re back, Italians! We love the Italians!”

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