Trump notes Andrew Jackson 'continues to be on the $20 bill'

David Knowles
·Senior Editor

Harriet Tubman will have to wait a bit longer.

As President Trump boasted of his administration’s accomplishments at a campaign rally Monday in Johnson City, Tenn., he also touted something he hasn’t done: replace Andrew Jackson’s portrait on the $20 bill with a likeness of Tubman, the African-American icon who ran the Underground Railroad that helped Southern slaves escape to freedom in the North.

After noting that Jackson’s historical connection with Tennessee, Trump seemed to revel in the fact that the former president was still represented on U.S. currency.

“Andrew Jackson, who continues to be on the $20 bill, you know that,” Trump said. “I’m a big Andrew Jackson fan.”

In 2016, before he left office, then President Barack Obama and his Treasury Secretary Jack Lew floated the idea of replacing Jackson with Tubman, a plan that would have made her the first African-American to be represented on U.S. currency.

Donald Trump
President Trump at a rally in Johnson City, Tenn., Oct. 1, 2018. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Susan Walsh/AP, AP (2)).

As he campaigned for president, Trump dismissed the idea to remove Jackson as “political correctness.”

“I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we could maybe come up with another denomination. Maybe we do the $2 bill or do another bill. I don’t like seeing it. Yes, I think it is pure political correctness. Been on the bill for many, many years,” Trump said on the “Today” show.

When he took over for Lew, Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin proceeded to slow walk that idea.

“Ultimately we will be looking at this issue,” Mnuchin said in a 2017 interview with CNBC. “It’s not something I’m focused on at the moment.”

Trump has often spoken glowingly of Jackson, and has a portrait of the seventh president in the Oval Office.

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