THE GERMANS GOT THERE FIRST: DONALD TRUMP & THE AMERICAN VALHALLA
THE GERMANS GOT THERE FIRST: DONALD TRUMP AND THE AMERICAN VALHALLA One of Donald Trump’s last actions as President, on Monday 18 January 2021 (his penultimate full day in office) was to announce plans for a ‘National Garden of American Heroes’. To use his own words, the plan is to create “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live”, reflecting “the awesome splendour of our country’s timeless exceptionalism” (I’m pretty convinced he wrote the speech himself, including the split infinitive). Although many aspects of the project are vague – the location has not been decided yet, and it’s unclear where the funding would come from such a large enterprise – the idea is to create a sculpture park featuring 244 statues of American worthies (all deceased, so Kobe Bryant and Whitney make the list, but not Michael Jordan or Beyoncé). Trump’s list is, to put it mildly, a mixed bag, ranging from semi-mythical frontiersmen (Daniel Boone, D