US 2020 election delay bid hints at Donald Trump’s true motive

President Donald Trump at Independence Day events at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota on July 3. Picture: AFP

When Donald Trump floated the idea of delaying the 2020 US presidential election for a little while – perhaps one or two years, until coronavirus has magically disappeared – he wasn’t deluding himself he could possibly win. Hundreds of thousands of dead Americans will ensure he doesn’t. Though they cannot not vote for Trump, they will inspire millions to not vote for him on their behalf. He is, instead, playing for time, giving us the clue to his true motive. His rush to Mount Rushmore.

As is his due, Donald demands a HUUGE memorial to his mighty presidency. The audio-animatronic doppelganger at Disneyland isn’t enough. Nor is his honoured place in the Chamber of Horrors at Tussaud’s. Just as his inauguration drew “the biggest crowds in history”, he wants the biggest effigy to signify his sad departure. His resurgent enemies in Washington have refused to countenance replacing Lincoln’s countenance with Donald’s in the eponymous Lincoln Memorial. His enemies in NYC have rejected Trump’s perfectly reasonable request to have his noggin, in gleaming gold rather than mere bronze, lowered in pride of place on a decapitated Statue of Liberty. So it has to be Rushmore.

Trump had feelers out to his friend the Australian PM, via other friends like Joe Hockey and Greg “the Shark” Norman, to have his beloved visage chiselled into Uluru. Not only is the colour of the rock appropriate – its famous tangerine matching the hues of the presidential hair and skin – but it would also be a lasting testament to the strength of the US-Australian relationship. Rio Tinto has offered to provide the explosives necessary for the preparatory work – as with Rushmore, dynamiting would precede the chiselling – but for some reason negotiations with its First Nations owners are not going well.

Similar problems with pesky indigenes are slowing progress at Rushmore, with the Lakota Sioux and other Native American tribes continuing to demand the return of Rushmore to Native American ownership. This most sacred of sites is central to their ancient culture – and was stolen from them in familiar circumstances when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. (The Wounded Knee Massacre was in the neighbourhood. In 1890, long after Lincoln’s assassination, hundreds of unarmed Sioux men, women and children were mowed down by US troops. Little wonder we’re talking sacred sites and disputed territory.)

Gutzon Borglum and a team of 400 laboured on the project from 1927 to 1941, conceived as a tourist attraction and to honour the “first 150 years of white history”. On laying down their sledgehammers both principal sculptor Luigi del Bianco and Borglum insisted there’d be no hope of adding a fifth president – and other nominees were mooted before Trump nominated himself. Not only was there no room but also the whole monument is unstable. Were Rio Tinto to place a few sticks of dynamite in the wrong place the entire edifice could come tumbling down. And we know that when it comes to destroying history, Rio has history.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. Chosen to “symbolise an accomplishment born, planned and created in the minds and by the hands of Americans for Americans”. Add Donald to George, Thomas, Abraham and Theodore and millions of tonnes of granite tumble down, with Donald in the detritus. Perfect symbolism. Total destruction caused by the president who oversaw the United States becoming a failed state.