Trump has mentioned having his face carved on Mount Rushmore multiple times. Here's why that is unlikely to happen.

• On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted that the idea of adding his face to Mount Rushmore "sounds like a good idea to me!"
• His comments came after The New York Times reported that the White House asked South Dakota's governor whether new carvings of presidents could be added to the monument.
• A spokesperson for the monument has said that there are two reasons why a fifth president won't be added to the sculpture: There's no usable rock and it goes against the artist's vision.
• Logistics aside, Americans polled in 2010 said the president they'd most like to see added to Mount Rushmore is John F. Kennedy.

President Donald Trump appears to have a fixation with getting his likeness added to Mount Rushmore, but there are a couple reasons why that wish is unlikely to come true.

Last weekend the president vehemently denied a report in The New York Times, which said that a member of his administration had contacted the governor of South Dakota last year to inquire about the process of adding another president to the sculpture.

However, Trump tweeted that it "sounds like a good idea to me" based on his accomplishments in his first term in office.

It's not the first time that Trump's apparent fascination with having his face on Mount Rushmore has surfaced.

In a 2018 interview, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said the president talked about wanting to be on Mount Rushmore during their first meeting in the Oval Office, according to the Argus Leader.

Trump also brought up the subject during a July 2017 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, saying: "I'd ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore, but here's the problem: If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say 'he believes he should be on Mount Rushmore.' So I won't say it, OK? I won't say it."

It's probably not happening

While adding presidents to Mount Rushmore has been a topic discussed by the public over the years, the National Park Service's stance has always been clear: it's not going to happen.

Maureen McGee-Ballinger, chief of interpretation and education at Mount Rushmore, told the Argus Leader in June that there are two reasons why more presidents aren't likely to be added to the monument.

The first is that the rock surrounding the faces is unusable.

"When Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore died in 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum closed down the project and stated that no more carvable rock existed," she said.

In fact, Borglum originally intended to place Thomas Jefferson's face to the left of George Washington's, but had to squeeze Jefferson in between Washington and Teddy Roosevelt when the original rock was deemed unstable.

Abraham Lincoln's carving had to be pushed further right as a result, and the sculptor had to cut a planned inscription.

The second reason, McGee-Ballinger explained, was that it would defeat the original intention for the sculpture, which was to honor the first 150 years of US history.

She said that Borglum chose the four presidents depicted — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt — not to honor those men specifically, but to "represent the principles of our present form of government."

"It is one man's artistic interpretation, and a tribute to that period of our nation's history," McGee-Ballinger said. "The National Park Service takes the position that death stayed the hand of the artist and the work is complete in its present form."

"Thus, to maintain both the integrity of the structure and the artist's concept, there is no procedure for adding another likeness, the sculpture is complete."

But new technology could make it possible

Though Mount Rushmore officials seem to have ruled out adding any more to the sculpture, one stone carver told The Washington Post in 2017 that he could still do the job.

The Post had contacted Stuart Simpson after Trump first mentioned the idea of adding his face to Mount Rushmore at the Ohio rally in 2017.

Simpson estimated that he could add Trump's face with a team of 25 designers, 30 trained stone workers, and 125 laborers, all for the price of $64 million — more than three times the cost of the original sculpture.

"Technology these days is way more advanced," Simpson said. "I think a lot of it will still have to be sculpted and removed off the mountain in the same manner that it was in the past, but with the new computer abilities and 3D scanning, I would think there's much more equipment that could be used to make it a more accurate and easier process."

Most likely contenders

Even if it were possible to add another president to Mount Rushmore, Trump likely wouldn't make a cut.

He could be described as the most unpopular president in modern history, because his approval rating has only ever been as high as 49%, according to Gallup.

Logistics aside, Gallup conducted a poll in 2010 asking Americans which president they would most like to see added to the sculpture, and the resounding answer was John F. Kennedy, who got 85% of the vote, according to the Argus Leader and Black Hills and Badlands, a South Dakota tourism website.

Of course, Trump wasn't an option in the poll, since he had not yet been president then.

There have also been movements started in the past to get former Presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan's faces added to the sculpture, the Argus Leader reported.

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