WASHINGTON • US President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to design and construct a statuary park honouring "American heroes", his latest embrace of American heritage in opposition to what he has described as a revolutionary leftist movement that would "erase our values".

The White House issued the executive order last Friday shortly after Mr Trump delivered a combatively political speech at Mount Rushmore denouncing recent acts by anti-racism protesters who destroyed or defaced national monuments. The order declares that he will "not abide an assault on our collective national memory".

Mr Trump directed the creation of a task force, chaired by the secretary of the interior, to "expeditiously" open a "National Garden of American Heroes" at a site to be determined.

His order specifies 31 Americans whom the garden must memorialise, a group of mostly white men that includes former presidents, pioneers and explorers, abolitionists and civil rights heroes.

Mr Trump's list of those to be memorialised also singled out two recently deceased conservative icons, former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and evangelist Billy Graham, as well as former president Ronald Reagan.

The line-up includes no equivalent contemporary liberals or Democrats.

It does include Martin Luther King Jr, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in modern major league baseball. The list also includes John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Christa McAuliffe, George S. Patton, Betsy Ross, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and the Wright brothers.

Mr Trump's order, which does not put a price tag on the project, says only that it should be located near a population centre "on a site of natural beauty that enables visitors to enjoy nature, walk among the statues, and be inspired to learn about great figures of America's history".

"Presidents certainly have a role in shaping national conversations about the meaning of our history. But this comes off as a desperate act of political grandstanding to his base," said professor of social justice and civil rights Kevin Gaines of the University of Virginia.

"Washington DC is already full of national monuments to some of the revered figures on Trump's roll call of heroes."

NYTIMES