Trump uses Columbus Day proclamation to attack 'radical activists' for trying to destroy his legacy

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation for "Columbus Day," an antiquated holiday that still remains in some states in the U.S. that are unaware of history.

"Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus's legacy. These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions," the proclamation says.

Trump used the proclamation to attack people he claims are trying to destroy the legacy of the man who never actually "discovered" the Americas to begin with.

Since archeology has advanced and experts studied the landing sites in the Americas and global texts that were written, it was found that the true credit goes to millions of native people who crossed over the Bering Land Bridge between what is now Russia and Alaska 13,000 or more years ago. Over thousands of years, those people ultimately populated the Americas.

Hundreds of years prior to Columbus, a Norse explorer from Iceland known as Leif Erikson is thought to have first set foot on the Americas in AD 1000. He called it Vinland, and the tales were written about in The Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders in 1200, centuries before Columbus was even born.

Columbus also wasn't the first European to "discover" the Americas. Merchant Bjarni Herjólfsson claimed to have sighted the land west of Greenland in 986.

Trump's White House has a horrendous record when it comes to science, however. In the past year, they've opted to trust ill-equipped doctors and X-ray experts on the coronavirus instead of virologists like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Ignoring the discoveries made by archaeologists over the past 100 years

Trump's proclamation seems to want to replace the Americas' actual history with the white-washed version and attack anyone who seeks to teach the failings, atrocities, and transgressions of the Columbus voyage noted reporter Jennifer Bendery. She tweeted Sunday that the failings, atrocities and transgressions are part of America's history too, despite being ignored by Trump.

Columbus, who was Italian, is still heralded by Italians, but it wasn't Italy that funded his mission to the Americas. It was the Catholic Monarchs and ultimately King Ferdinand and Isabella who ultimately made the mission happen.

There are hundreds of other Italian Americans who have made outstanding contributions to American culture over the past 200 years, which could be held up as a link between the two countries.

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