Why Donald Trump wants to rename Denali Mountain to Mount McKinley

It is well known that Donald Trump is a pioneer of yesterday. But the backward-looking head of state is by no means lacking in fresh ideas. On the contrary: the more absurd, the better, it seems. Annex Greenland, incorporate Canada, reclaim the Panama Canal – Trump’s ambitions literally know no limits.

When it comes to naming, he has also recently become free again. In his inaugural speech as the 47th US President on Monday, he not only repeated his demand that the Gulf of Mexico should henceforth be called the Gulf of America. Trump announced that Mount Denali in the state of Alaska would soon be called Mount McKinley again. What does that mean?

At almost 6200 meters, Denali is the highest mountain in North America and is therefore third among the so-called “Seven Summits”, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Denali is also the center of the national park of the same name in rugged Alaska, the least populated of the 50 US states.

The name comes from the language of the local indigenous people. However, that wasn’t always the case. When a gold prospector explored the then-unmapped mountain range in the late 19th century, he suggested naming its highest peak Mount McKinley in honor of presidential candidate William McKinley. Although he was never in Alaska during his life, the mountain still bore his name until 2015.

Then Barack Obama renamed the mountain “to recognize Denali’s sacred status for generations of Alaska Natives.” They had been pushing for this since the 1970s.

Trump was outraged by this. On [McKinley kam aus Ohio, Anm. d. Red.]. I’ll give him the old name back!” He tried to do that in his first term in office, but failed due to resistance from members of Congress from Alaska. In purely formal terms, in this case Trump certainly has the power to turn back the clock, as the mountain is in contrast to the Gulf from Mexico undoubtedly on US territory.

The legitimate question remains: why?

On the one hand, Trump certainly wants to get one over on former President Obama, as he hates hardly any Democrat as passionately as Hussein, as he generally calls his predecessor by his middle name.

On the other hand, the renaming plan is above all an expression of Trump’s admiration for his predecessor. And for himself. McKinley, 25th President of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901, “made our country very rich through tariffs” and was a “born businessman,” Trump said in his speech on Monday The parallels imagined are hard to miss.

In fact, McKinley was as enthusiastic about tariffs as a means of political pressure at the time as Trump is today. In 1890, as a member of parliament, he took the lead in introducing massive taxes on foreign goods – the “McKinley tariffs”. Trump, of course, ignores the fact that the man who gave his name later came to the conclusion that tariffs are by no means a panacea.

The two Republican senators from Alaska are resisting the move by the new man in the White House. “I strongly disagree with the President’s decision regarding Denali. Our nation’s highest mountain, called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by its rightful name,” .

“Denali” means something like “the big one” in the indigenous language. Seen this way, the mountain was never not “great”.