President Donald Trump denied a report that claimed his administration asked South Dakota officials about adding his likeness to Mount Rushmore.
After the story appeared in The New York Times, other news outlets reported it as well. Trump tweeted Sunday night that the claim was untrue.
"This is Fake News by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @CNN," he wrote. "Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!"
According to the report, a White House aide asked the office of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem about the process of carving Trump's face onto the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Completed in 1941, the sculpture features the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
The National Park Service, which operates the monument, said there is no room for another face because the land is unstable and there is no more rock suitable to be carved.
The face of the mountain is mostly granite.
"From time to time individuals, groups or organizations make proposals to add the busts of other individuals to Mount Rushmore National Memorial," Mount Rushmore National Memorial chief of interpretation and education Maureen McGee-Ballinger said in June.
"Additions are not possible for two reasons. First, the rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving. When Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, died in 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum closed down the project and stated that no more carvable rock existed."
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