Donald Trump teaches history
He gave a succinct history lesson on each of the four figures carved into the mountain behind him. It was a wonderful thing to hear. Not the hostile, monochrome, ahistorical register in which all dead figures have lately come to be described, but a succinct biographical reminder of why George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt came to be immortalized.
Demonstrating that this is an inclusive, rather than an exclusionist story, his speech wove other heroes into this tradition. Trump talked of Dr Martin Luther King's urge to his fellow citizens 'not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage'. And, announcing a new national park to celebrate America's heroes, he listed some of the best: Frederick Douglass, Jesse Owens and Louis Armstrong. As he finished reeling off this genuinely diverse list of great people he added, 'Only America could have produced them all.'