US president-elect Donald Trump has said he will rename Denali, Alaska natives’ name for North America’s tallest mountain, after William McKinley, the 25th US president who was assassinated in 1901.

Democratic former president Barack Obama in 2015 officially renamed the mountain as Denali, siding with the state of Alaska and ending a decades-long naming battle. The peak had been officially called Mount McKinley since 1917.

“They took his name off Mount McKinley,” Trump said in a speech to supporters in Phoenix on Sunday. “He was a great president,” Trump, a Republican, said, adding that his administration will “bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it.”