Trump to rename Denali to Mount McKinley after Obama changed it

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that he will rename North America’s highest peak to Mount McKinley after former President Barack Obama decided to call it Denali as it was identified by indigenous Alaskans.

It was known as Mount McKinley from 1917 until 2015 and Trump vowed Sunday at the Turning Point USA AmFest conference in Phoenix that the mountain will once again honor America’s 25th president, a hugely popular Republican candidate who successfully won the office twice but was assassinated in 1901. His vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, assumed the office.

“They took his name off Mount McKinley, that’s what they do to people,” he said.

“McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” Trump told the crowd just after he talked about potentially taking back ownership of the Panama Canal. Trump noted that McKinley was a successful businessman who applied “business principles” to the presidency and built America’s wealth on tariffs, not taxes.

“That’s one of the reasons that we are going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley, because I think he deserves it. There are lots of things we can name but I think he deserves it. That’s not very gracious for somebody who did a great job,” he said, referencing Obama’s renaming of the mountain.

Obama tried to justify the name change because he said McKinley had no “significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska,” Reuters noted.

The mountain is over 20,000 feet tall and was first called Mount McKinley in 1896 during a gold rush in the area. A prospector decided to call it that based on McKinley receiving the Republican presidential nomination that year and because the GOP candidate passionately supported the gold standard.

Trump’s declaration did not sit well with some lawmakers. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), without referencing Trump or the name of McKinley posted on X, “There is one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali - the Great One.”