Trump suggests reverting Denali to Mount McKinley

President-elect Donald Trump is again threatening to revert the name of North America’s tallest peak from Denali to Mount McKinley, resurrecting an unfulfilled promise from his first campaign.

Trump brought up the proposal Sunday during a rambling, hour-long speech at a Turning Point USA rally in Phoenix, Ariz. Just after he vowed to repatriate the Panama Canal from Panama – prompting resistance from Panama’s president, according to USA Today – Trump turned to a discussion of the mountain’s former namesake, 19th-century President William McKinley from Ohio.

“McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” Trump said. “They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people. Now, he was a great president, very good president. At a minimum, he was a very good businessman. He was a businessman, then a governor, very successful businessman.”

Trump claimed McKinley built the nation’s wealth in the 1890s by imposing tariffs, which Trump now backs imposing on a wide array of goods imported from China, Canada, Mexico and other nations. Some economists took issue with Trump’s account of McKinley during this year’s presidential campaign, noting that McKinley supported “a policy of good will and friendly trade relations,” as well as the economic value immigration brought to America.

Trump also likened McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded him upon his assassination in 1901. The president-elect credited McKinley with “creating a vast sum of money” for Roosevelt’s administration.

“So let’s say they were both excellent presidents, but McKinley did that,” Trump said. “And that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley, because I think he deserves it. I think he deserves it.”

Denali was renamed in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama, the highlight of an Alaska trip he took to raise awareness of climate change. The change drew approval at a subsequent meeting of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, where an advisor to Obama’s Interior secretary said the decision was “about respect.”

Trump had pushed back on the Indigenous name during his first presidential run in 2016, promising “I will change back!” in an X post. He never did so, however.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who had thanked Obama for changing the mountain’s name, was succinct in a social-media post on X responding to Trump Sunday.

“You can’t improve upon the name that Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans bestowed on North America’s tallest peak, Denali – the Great One,” Murkowski said in a longer statement on Monday. “For years, I advocated in Congress to restore the rightful name for this majestic mountain to respect Alaska’s first people who have lived on these lands for thousands of years. This is an issue that should not be relitigated.”

Amanda Coyne, a spokeswoman for Sen. Dan Sullivan, shared a similar sentiment in a Monday email.

“Senator Sullivan like many Alaskans prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago—Denali,” Coyne said.

Calls and emails to outgoing Rep. Mary Peltola and Rep.-elect Nick Begich, as well as Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office, weren’t immediately returned Monday.