Donald Trump says Columbus statues were replaced by "nothing but ‘WOKE,’" or "nothing at all"

President Donald Trump marked Columbus Day with a White House event Friday, before the holiday’s Monday observance, and issued a proclamation naming Oct. 12 Columbus Day while honoring the explorer. In March, a mostly marble statue was installed near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, assembled from pieces of a Columbus memorial that was destroyed and dumped into Baltimore’s harbor amid the 2020 disturbances after George Floyd died. Italian American Organizations United owns the work and lent it to the federal government. Various institutions and government bodies now mark Indigenous Peoples Day instead, and President Joe Biden issued the first presidential proclamation for it in 2021. Trump has objected to such shifts, blaming Democrats for attacks on Columbus’s reputation and arguing the removals had not yielded fitting substitutes.