Donald Trump has said getting his face carved onto Mount Rushmore "sounds like a good idea", after a White House aide reportedly reached out to the South Dakota governor to discuss the plan.
The US president denied reports in the New York Times that Kristi Noem was approached to ask about the process of adding new presidents to the 60-foot monument.
He branded the claim "fake news", but added that it "sounds like a pretty good idea" as he has accomplished "many things" during his time in office, "perhaps more than any other presidency".
Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: "This is Fake News by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @cnn.
"Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!"
During a presidential visit to South Dakota last year, Ms Noem gave Mr Trump a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore that included his face on.
A White House official did not deny the reports but told the New York Times that Mount Rushmore is a federal monument, rather than state-run.
Mr Trump has reportedly speculated before about his face being carved on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
In a 2018 interview, Ms Noem recounted a meeting when Mr Trump first became US president when they discussed the monument.
She told Argus Leader: "He said, 'Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand, and so I shook his hand, and I said, 'Mr President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.'
"And he goes, 'Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'"
Mount Rushmore was completed in 1941.
The local Native American Cheyenne River Sioux tribe has called for it to be removed, claiming that the monument is on sacred ground and it was promised to the indigenous people in a 19th-century treaty.
