Brietbart senior editor-at-large Ben Shapiro suggested Monday that President Obama’s decision to revert Mt. McKinley to its Alaska Native name was because he “decided against his second choice, Mt. Trayvon.”
On Sunday, ahead of a historic visit to Alaska, President Obama announced he would be reverting Mt. McKinley to its Alaska Native name, Denali.
Perhaps we should just be grateful Obama didn’t decide to rename Mt. McKinley Mt. Trayvon.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 31, 2015
Shapiro later expanded on his idea:
Why did Obama choose to change the name now? Presumably because Obama has now solved all the world’s problems, and decided against his second choice, Mt. Trayvon. But more seriously, Obama likely opposes the legacy of President McKinley, given that McKinley led America to victory in the Spanish-American War and rejected inflation by sticking with the gold standard. By the end of McKinley’s tenure, the United States had taken military control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and annexed Hawaii.
Shapiro went on to write that President Obama has spent his terms undermining McKinley’s accomplishments by opening diplomatic ties with Cuba and attempting to give native Hawaiians the same sovereign status as Native Americans.
The reference to Mt. Trayvon was apparently one about Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager who was shot and killed by a volunteer neighborhood watchman in 2012 in Florida. After the killing, Obama described the teen as someone who “could have been me 35 years ago,” a line that outraged conservatives.
