President-elect Trump pledged this week to undo former President Obama’s 2015 decision to change the name of North America’s tallest peak to its Koyukon Athabascan name “Denali,” meaning “High One” or “Great One.”
Speaking to conservatives at a Phoenix conference, Trump made the pledge and noted President William McKinley was also a Republican who believed in tariffs. He first promised to undo Obama’s action in August 2015 and called it an “insult to Ohio,” where McKinley was born and raised.
During his Phoenix remarks, he also pledged to undo Democrats’ rebranding of southern military bases named for Confederates – like Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was formerly named after Gen. Braxton Bragg.
The 20,320-foot mountain was first dubbed Mount McKinley in 1896 by gold prospector William Dickey, after learning the Ohioan had won the GOP presidential nomination – and as a swipe at silver prospectors he met who preferred Democrat William Jennings Bryan and his plan for a silver standard for the dollar.
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Ohio’s William McKinley (1843-1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination in September 1901. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Six months into his second term, McKinley was visiting Buffalo, New York, when anarchist laborer Leon Czolgosz assassinated him in a gladhanding line. Czolgosz believed the root of economic inequality stood with the government and was reportedly inspired by the 1900 assassination of Italian King Umberto I.
However, many Alaskans have appeared to prefer the historic name Denali:
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski told KTUU that Trump’s plan to bring back “Mt. McKinley” is an “awful idea.”
“We already went through this with President Trump back and at the very, very beginning of his first term,” she said Monday.
Murkowski said…
