David M Jackson

USA TODAY

Republican front-runner Donald Trump opposes the decision to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman, calling it "pure political correctness."

Tubman, who helped many slaves escape via the Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War, is "fantastic," Trump said on NBC's Today show, but "I’d love to leave Andrew Jackson" on the $20.

The businessman who has often railed against "political correctness" suggested Tubman could go on a new denomination, "maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill" — a suggestion that one of Trump's supporters, former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, also has made.

Tubman will be the first African-American on U.S. paper currency and the first woman in more than a century.

Trump praised Jackson, the nation's seventh president, telling Today that he has "been on the bill for many, many years and really represented somebody that really was very important to this country."