Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: President Donald Trump has in stalled a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds, a replica of one that was thrown into Baltimore’s Inner Harbour by protesters in 2020.
The Conference of Presidents of Ma jor Italian American Organizations said in a March 22 statement that the stat ue was placed on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which is adjacent to the White House, “in celebration of Italian American his tory and culture.”
The coalition said the 13-foot replica was constructed in part using pieces of the shattered statue retrieved from the Baltimore harbor.
The original statue was torn down by protesters in Baltimore amid protests in 2020 sparked by the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis that year.
Trump signed a proclamation in Oc tober 2025 recognizing October 13 as Columbus Day, marking a shift from President Joe Biden’s practice since 2021 of observing both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same date.
The President denounced those whom he called “left-wing radicals” attempting to “erase our history” and “attack our her itage” by toppling Columbus statues and tarnishing the explorer’s character. Many statues of Columbus, an Italian often falsely credited as the first over seas explorer to discover America, were taken down at the height of the demon strations in 2020.
Columbus has long been a conten tious figure in history for his treatment of Indigenous communities and for his role ushering in European colonization in the Americas.
