President Donald Trump is planning to place a reconstructed statue of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds, according to people familiar with the matter. The sculpture is a replica of a monument that was pulled down and thrown into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor during protests in 2020, reviving a long-running debate over how the United States should commemorate Columbus.
President Donald Trump is planning to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on the south side of the White House grounds, according to The Washington Post, citing three people with knowledge of the pending move. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the statue is expected to sit near E Street and north of the Ellipse, though they cautioned that plans could change.
The statue is a reconstruction of a marble monument that was unveiled in Baltimore in October 1984 by then-President Ronald Reagan, and was later pulled down by protesters on July 4, 2020, and dumped into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor during demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd, according to reporting summarized by The Washington Post and historical accounts of the monument.
The Washington Post reported that Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the destroyed pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support that included local charitable backing and federal grant funding. Bill Martin, an Italian American businessman involved in the effort, told The Washington Post that the rebuilt statue is expected to be transferred from a warehouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the Trump administration in the coming weeks. Martin said the project was tied, in his view, to Italian American identity and the way many immigrant communities have historically treated Columbus as a symbol.
The White House declined to comment on the installation plans, the newspaper reported, but issued a statement defending Columbus. “In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”
The planned installation follows Trump’s Columbus Day proclamation dated October 9, 2025, in which he called Columbus “the original American hero” and “a giant of Western civilization,” and criticized what he described as efforts by political opponents to remove Columbus from public spaces.
The plan also comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to restore or reinstall certain monuments that were damaged or removed during the 2020 protest wave. In Washington, the administration restored and reinstalled the statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike—previously toppled and burned in 2020—placing it back in Judiciary Square in October 2025, according to the Associated Press.
Debates over Columbus have intensified across the country in recent years, with critics pointing to the consequences of European colonization for Indigenous peoples and supporters arguing that Columbus Day is also closely tied to Italian American heritage. Former Vice President Kamala Harris has previously criticized the legacy of European exploration, saying it ushered in “a wave of devastation” for tribal nations and urging Americans not to shy away from what she called a “shameful past,” according to a widely circulated clip that was later authenticated in a fact-check.
