Targets Teddy Roosevelt Statue Removal

Zinke, a Republican who served as a congressman in Montana before joining the Trump administration in 2017, is featured in the ad reciting an oft quoted excerpt from Roosevelt’s famous 1910 speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” better known as the “Man in the Arena” speech.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,” Zinke begins in the ad.

The ad, which will appear on YouTube as well as other social media platforms, shows headlines flashing Zinke’s career successes and photos of him from his time spent outdoors, at the White House, and in the military. The Montana Republican previously served as a SEAL for 23 years, including overseas in Iraq, and retired as a commander in 2008.

“… So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat,” Zinke says as his recitation concludes.

The message comes after the New York City museum removed its grand statue of Roosevelt on horseback — flanked by a Native American and black man — last month following a commission voting last June to remove it because it “supports a thematic framework of colonization and racism.”

Construction workers erect scaffolding around the statue of US President Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on December 2, 2021. - New York has begun the extended process of removing a statue of former US president Theodore Roosevelt, which has been long criticized as a racist and colonialist symbol and became a cultural flashpoint in recent years. The statue depicts Roosevelt on horseback with Native American and African American figures standing at his side.