Donald Trump is turning to an unlikely ally in defending his latest controversial move: Tony Soprano.
That’s who the White House appears to quote in a statement regarding its plans to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds.
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle says in a statement addressing rumors of the statue. “And he will continue 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.
In the season four episode, “Christopher,” mob don and family man Tony (James Gandolfini) gets 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, “In this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero — end of story!”
It has become something of a defining line of dialogue from the show, highlighting themes of identity, mythology and ideology that made it so much more than just another mafia series.
In the same episode, the other wise guys on Tony’s crew have a heated discussion about Columbus, even mentioning a Columbus statue that will become the site 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 first, lasting European contact with the continent. By the 1990s, however, history scholars had begun to reconsider Columbus’ legacy, reframing him as a grand overseer of a genocide of indigenous peoples.
The new Columbus statue in question would be erected on the south side of the White House grounds, a number of sources tell The Washington Post. The statue is a reconstruction of one unveiled by Ronald Reagan and then dumped in Baltimore harbor by protesters in 2020 amid George Floyd protests.
“A group 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 protect and celebrate Columbus Day, and in October signed a proclamation recognizing Columbus as “the original American hero.”
The White House and Sopranos creator David Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HiCelebNews online magazine publishes interesting content every day in the TV section of the entertainment category. Follow us to read the latest news.
