Folk singer Woody Guthrie — who despised Trump’s dad — to get a statue in his presidential sculpture garden of ‘heroes’
President Trump’s father is probably rolling over in his grave.
Trump announced construction plans Monday for a statue of Woody Guthrie — even though the late folk music icon wrote a seething song decades ago about his dad’s allegedly racist business practices in New York City.
The Guthrie statue is among 244 sculptures that Trump wants built as part of a “National Garden of American Heroes,” according to a statement issued by the White House.
“Each individual has been chosen for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love,” Trump said. “Astounding the world by the sheer power of their example, each one of them has contributed indispensably to America’s noble history.”
A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment on Trump’s thinking behind picking Guthrie, who died in 1967.
Deana McCloud, the executive director of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Okla., said she doubts Trump compiled the list of “heroes” himself, considering the folk singer’s inclusion.
McCloud also said Guthrie likely would have wanted nothing to do with a Trump-style sculpture garden if he were still alive and noted that the singer was famous for emblazoning his guitar with a sticker that said “This Machine Kills Fascists.”
“He used to say that as long as there are still people oppressing others, then the fascists are still with us,” McCloud told the Daily News. “I think Woody would be very troubled by many of the things that have happened over the past four years.”
Known for left-wing sensibilities that he expressed powerfully in song, Guthrie penned “Old Man Trump” after moving into the Beach Haven apartment complex in Gravesend, Brooklyn, in 1950.
The complex was owned and operated by Trump’s late father, Fred Trump, and Guthrie’s song blasted the real estate tycoon for segregating his units along a “color line.”
“I suppose Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate he stirred up in the bloodpot of human hearts, when he drawed that color line here at his Beach Haven family project,” reads the opening lines of the song.
Written decades before the construction of Donald Trump’s Midtown skyscraper by the same name, Guthrie’s song goes on, “Beach Haven is Trump’s tower, where no black folks come to roam. No, no, Old Man Trump. Old Beach Haven ain’t my home.”
Most of the individuals on Trump’s list of “American Heroes” are conservative stalwarts such as late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. There are also some Founding Fathers on the list, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
There are some other eyebrow-raising picks beyond Guthrie.
NBA star Kobe Bryant, who blasted Trump for causing “division” before his death last year, is on the list. Left-wing political scientist Hannah Arendt also made the cut.
The site for Trump’s desired sculpture garden has yet to be determined.
