Donald Trump is popping to an unlikely ally in defending his latest controversial move: Tony Soprano.
That’s who the White House appears to cite in an announcement regarding its plans to put in a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds.
“On this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle says in an announcement addressing rumors of the statue. “And he’ll proceed to be honored as such by President Trump.”
It’s a declaration that appears to pay homage to an episode of HBO’s The Sopranos that aired in 2002.
Within the season 4 episode, “Christopher,” mob don and family man Tony (James Gandolfini) gets right into a breakfast table confrontation with son A.J. (Robert Iler) after A.J. points out that his textbook reframes the venerated Italian explorer as a brutal colonizer who enslaved and slaughtered indigenous people.
Responding with Italian-American passion and pride, Tony shouts, “On this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero — end of story!”
It has develop into something of a defining line of dialogue from the show, highlighting themes of identity, mythology and beliefs that made it so far more than simply one other mafia series.
In the identical episode, the opposite sensible guys on Tony’s crew have a heated discussion about Columbus, even mentioning a Columbus statue that may develop into the location of a protest.
“You gotta admit they did get massacred, the Indians,” Christopher (Michael Imperioli) says.
“It’s not like we didn’t give them a bunch of shit to make up for that,” Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) retorts. “Land. Reservations. And now they got the casinos.”
Columbus made landfall on the Americas in 1492. By the late 18th century, he had been lionized as a national hero who established the primary, lasting European contact with the continent. By the Nineteen Nineties, nevertheless, history scholars had begun to reconsider Columbus’ legacy, reframing him as a grand overseer of a genocide of indigenous peoples.
The brand new Columbus statue in query can be erected on the south side of the White House grounds, various sources tell The Washington Post. The statue is a reconstruction of 1 unveiled by Ronald Reagan after which dumped in Baltimore harbor by protesters in 2020 amid George Floyd protests.
“A bunch of Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the destroyed pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support from local charities and federal grant funding,” the Post reports.
Trump pledged during his second presidential campaign to guard and have fun Columbus Day, and in October signed a proclamation recognizing Columbus as “the unique American hero.”
The White House and Sopranos creator David Chase didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.