Trump Promotes Slave Owner Statue Near White House
President Donald Trump promoted the installation of a statue honoring Caesar Rodney, a Founding Father and slave owner, near the White House at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. Trump posted on Truth Social celebrating Rodney’s midnight ride to cast the deciding vote for independence on July 2, 1776, and urged Americans to visit the statue. The bronze equestrian figure, which dates to 1923 and was removed from Wilmington, Delaware in 2020 during protests following George Floyd’s killing, was restored to public display in April at a cost exceeding $527,226 under an expedited no-bid contract administered by the National Park Service.
Rodney enslaved as many as 200 people after inheriting his father’s plantation, according to historical records, though he introduced legislation to prohibit slave importation into Delaware. City officials removed the statue in 2020 to facilitate discussion about the public display of historical figures with records of slavery and racial injustice. Trump responded by denouncing the removal as a “radical purge” and “extreme anti-American historical revisionism,” framing efforts to contextualize or relocate statues of slaveholders as erasure of history.
Trump has directed a systematic campaign to reshape how American history is presented in federal institutions through executive orders targeting what he describes as “corrosive” content. The Interior Department has been ordered to remove historical information about slavery and immigration from sites including Bunker Hill Monument in Massachusetts, while signage addressing Native American history and climate science at national parks has been targeted for elimination. These actions contradict documented historical facts and obscure ongoing impacts of slavery and colonial violence on the nation’s founding and development.
The statue’s reinstatement occurs within a broader installation titled “Spirit of 76” at Freedom Plaza that includes a 23-foot “Spirit of Liberty” sculpture and representations of Revolutionary War soldiers. The project exemplifies Trump’s strategy to control historical narrative by centralizing monuments to figures who enslaved Black Americans while erasing contextual information about slavery’s role in American history. The restoration demonstrates how Trump uses federal resources and authority to advance revisionist historical framing aligned with his political objectives.