President Donald Trump boasted that he single-handedly revived a polarizing figure from American history while pitching himself to a key voting bloc.
Addressing several hundred Italian Americans in the White House East Room on Friday, Trump took credit for restoring the reputation of Christopher Columbus, The New York Times reported.
"The reason I get all of the Italian vote, I really believe. I didn't do it for this reason. I resurrected him," Trump said, adding that the explorer has "been rehabbed 100 percent."
The event came three days before Columbus Day and less than a month before the midterm elections, as Trump's approval has sagged with voters across nearly every demographic, The Times noted.
Trump framed Columbus as a target of his political opponents, though the 15th-century navigator has hardly been a campaign issue this election cycle.
"As you know, the radical left communists hate Columbus and they want to abolish Columbus Day," Trump said. "These lunatics that are running, they're all against Christopher Columbus. But I'll tell you what, we're going to be here almost two-and-a-half years. He's going to be so protected, like nobody's ever been protected before."
Trump spoke beside large boards showing marble Columbus statues. He has already placed one on White House grounds, a replica of the Baltimore monument that protesters pulled down and threw into the city's Inner Harbor in 2020, and intends to add another to the Rose Garden.
The president also weighed in on how Hollywood portrays the mafia, complaining that filmmakers had stopped giving on-screen mobsters Italian names out of concern it was discriminatory.
"I said, 'No, no, you have to understand. The Italians. They love it,'" Trump recalled.
He later brought onstage Brett Rugo, whose company built the new South Lawn helipad, calling him "a serious Italian."
The Times noted that Trump may have some repair work to do with Italian American voters. Over the past year, he has gone after Pope Leo XIV, turned on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni after she criticized those attacks, and threatened steep tariffs on Italian pasta makers.
Also in the room, though not acknowledged on the stage, was Trump donor John Cafaro, whose firm landed a no-bid contract to install a water purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which then turned green with algae. Cafaro told The Times he'd heard the pool would start filling Monday then "quickly got up and walked away," per the article.
