A new report from Yahoo! News tells the tale of a Honolulu, Hawaii resident who found herself rather shocked and appalled when she stepped out onto the lanai of her condo to take in the familiar, comforting view of Diamond Head State Monument, only to find that it had been defaced in the name of disgraced ex-president Trump.
In the side of the volcanic tuff cone on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, it appeared as though someone has scrawled Trump-loving graffiti.
“I saw some illegal hikers, got out my binoculars to check and see if they were OK,” Margy Benson said, “and I saw this bare patch high up on the slopes that looked like it had lettering, and I’m going, ‘Are my eyes seeing that right ?'”
Benson explained that the letters appeared to read “Trump.”
“It was more just about I was shocked to see it on Diamond Head, the defacing of the mountain, which is a state monument and a national landmark,” she stated.
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Benson lives in the Diamond Head Hillside condominiums at the corner of Campbell and Monsarrat avenues, according to the Yahoo! report.
The report goes on to note that Margy studied the letters for a good while and ultimately guessed that they weren’t actually painted directly on the state monument as she first believed, but was rather scrawled onto a banner of sorts that was somehow attached to the crater.
Honolulu native Alison Kwok, a frequent visitor to Diamon Head, also spoke out on the monument’s graffiti, claiming that it was pointed out to her by a passerby in the area back in mid-June.
Kwok revealed, “A woman walking a dog ran up to me and said, ‘I don’t care what your politics are, nobody should deface a sacred monument.’ Vandalism shouldn’t be allowed.”
A friend of Benson’s and resident of Waikiki, Jan Nilsson, said she was able to see the outline of the banner from her apartment building with her naked eye and could clearly read what it said with the help of some binoculars.
Benson’s penthouse neighbor, Richard Rountree, said he’s seen his fair share of manmade additions to the monument, such as fencing, roads, and electrical poles, but that there shouldn’t be anybody’s name up there—it’s a beautiful volcano and I would prefer it to be virgin of politics.”
Spokesman for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Dan Dennison, responded via email to questions from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Thursday of this week and claimed it was the first he’d heard of the Trump-loving lettering marring the state’s monument.
Dennison viewed photos of the banner submitted to him by a resident and noted that it was placed on Board of Water Supply land “and is an area that is very steep and hard to access.”
Despite the banner’s tricky location, officers from DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resource Enforcement and Division of State Parks reportedly headed up to the crater the next day. Once they arrived, officials realized the banner actually read “Trump 2021” and had been affixed to rocks and trees on the side of the crater with screws and hooks.
“Whomever put this ‘Trump 2021’ banner up went to a lot of trouble and they could have gotten into trouble,” DOCARE Officer Edward Thompson said in a statement, taking extra care to point out that hiking on the rim of Diamond Head State Monument, or anywhere that’s not directly on the designated paths, is strictly prohibited.
“Had we caught them they could have been cited for entering a closed area as well as possibly for defacing public property,” he said.
State Parks Administrator Curt Cottrell said in the statement, “No matter your political leanings, putting banners and signs up on public property is not acceptable or lawful.”
Cottrell went on to add, “given the natural and cultural importance of Le ‘ahi, it is definitely not the place for making political statements or putting up signs.”
You can read the full report here, and watch a clip of the banner here:
Featured image via screen capture
