Trump’s Defense of Columbus Day Is a Defense of American Greatness

Today is Columbus Day, which means the left is engaging in its annual performative meltdown over the supposed evils of colonization while shouting to anyone who will listen about how Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac who didn’t really discover America and should be condemned as one of history’s great villains. Actually, our liberal betters tell us, the holiday should be “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” and Columbus’s name and legacy should be tossed into the dustbin of history.

The progressive onslaught against Columbus has been building for decades – and were it not for President Donald Trump, it might have succeeded. But Trump has stepped into the fold and single-handedly turned the tide in the war on Columbus. In doing so, Trump is defending not just one explorer, but all of Western history against those who seek to rewrite the past and tear down the West’s greatest heroes in order to destroy the very idea of American greatness.

“As you know, the radical left communists hate Columbus and they want to abolish Columbus Day,” Trump told a group of several hundred Italian Americans at the White House last week. “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.”

The White House

@WhiteHouse

·Follow

“I'm bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes...” —President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸

2:14 PM · Apr 27, 2025

45.2K

Reply

Copy link

Read 3.0K replies

The New York Times, along with most of the corporate media, has dismissed Trump’s Columbus Day festivities as an election-season pitch to Italian Americans. Even to Trump’s supporters, it might be easy to see the president’s defense of Columbus as simply a reactionary response to PC culture or just another humorous jab to get a rise out of the woke press corps.

But Trump is not engaging in political theater. Rather, he is forcing Americans to ask themselves a serious and consequential question: Do we still believe that the civilization we inherited deserves to survive – and that its greatest heroes and achievements deserve to be celebrated and honored?

Columbus never set foot in the territory that became the United States, and he could not have imagined the republic that would emerge nearly three centuries after his first voyage. Yet his willingness to venture into the unknown embodies intrepidity, courage, perseverance, and an insatiable desire to push the boundaries of what is possible – all qualities that have shown up time and again during the most pivotal moments in the American story.

Those virtues would find new expression in settlers crossing the continent in covered wagons, the Wright brothers taking flight, scientists unlocking the power of the atom, and American astronauts taking the first steps on the Moon. These were different undertakings with different purposes and consequences. But each required people willing to attempt what others considered impossible.

America remains a nation of explorers and innovators because generations of Americans have understood ambition – the ambition that Christoper Columbus had – as something to cultivate. A nation becomes like the heroes it emulates. Teach children to admire courage, and they will find the courage to accomplish extraordinary things. Teach them that every inherited achievement is merely an indictment on the nation’s past, and we should hardly be surprised when they lose confidence in their country’s future.

Trump’s Columbus Day proclamation makes that connection explicit.

“Above all, we remember with gratitude that the triumph of freedom and the glory of our Republic are the fruits of his faith and unrelenting devotion,” the proclamation reads. “Today, we reaffirm that Christopher Columbus is a legend whose vision, fortitude, and perseverance unleashed a dynamic of history that led to the creation of the greatest, freest, and most just Nation in history. We are forever indebted to his courageous voyage, and we will never allow his legacy to be erased by radical extremists.”

That is a declaration of gratitude for an inheritance. America did not spring into existence from nothing. Our constitutional order grew from centuries of argument over law, conscience, political authority, and the dignity of the individual – all shaped by the unique environment of the New World, all made possible by Columbus’s daring voyage.

The seeds of liberty planted during the Renaissance, germinated during the Enlightenment, took root and burst forth in the American republic, leading to the greatest period of flourishing and prosperity in human history.

The United States became a place where the achievements of Western civilization could develop on an extraordinary scale – and where people from around the world could participate in them. Our obligation is to understand that inheritance, preserve its best achievements, and carry them forward.

At a time when so many Western nations seem determined to destroy their own culture and history, America bears a particular responsibility. A civilization cannot endure indefinitely if its children learn only why they should despise it. Economic strength and military power matter, but neither can substitute for the conviction that there is something inherently good worth defending.

Ronald Reagan understood the stakes. At the conclusion of his 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech, he declared, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Reagan returned to the responsibility of passing on America’s heritage in his 1989 farewell address. He called for an “informed patriotism” grounded in an understanding of American history and freedom. Love of country could not survive through sentiment alone; each generation had to teach the next what America represented.

Columbus belongs within that larger story. Preserving his place in our national memory does not require pretending that he was an American founder or a flawless man. It requires recognizing why his voyage mattered and why he deserves to be regarded as a great hero of our history.

Like the medieval monks who preserved ancient knowledge through the Dark Ages, we have a duty to transmit what we have received. An inheritance survives because someone considers it valuable enough to protect.

Trump has given that responsibility a physical expression. On July 4, 2020, protesters toppled Baltimore’s Columbus statue and threw it into the Inner Harbor. A replica – which contains pieces of the original retrieved from the harbor – now stands on the grounds of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White House.

That symbolism is powerful. Trump has taken a monument, a physical manifestation of our history, that was torn down and destroyed and resurrected it to a place of public honor. Where its destruction asserted that Columbus should disappear from civic memory, its restoration asserts that Americans retain the right and indeed the obligation to honor him.

Columbus sailed because he believed there was something beyond the horizon worth finding. Generations of Americans have acted on that same conviction. Preserving his legacy affirms the spirit of discovery that helped make this country great – and that America will need if it hopes to remain great.