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It is a bit ironic that Columbus's role in the founding of America was propped up by the original immigrant generations who wanted to make it seem like they also had a place in America's history books, amongst the "Anglo-Saxon" Protestant Founding Fathers. But nowadays he's seen as an example of the opposite of that, a figure whose continued presence discredits and threatens America's minorities, and is sometimes even brought up as an example of white supremacy and the "white-washing" of history.
If it wasn't for the Italians, Columbus wouldn't really even be thought of as a guy that had anything to do with the United States, but they wanted to push his "discovery of America" as having also contributed to the founding of the United States, to make it seem like the Italians have always had a significant impact on America's history, even before the "Anglo-Saxons" themselves.
In that day and era, it was seen as "progressive" (from a pro-immigrant and pro-minorities perspective) to act like Columbus and the Italians had the "dibs" on the American continent prior to the Founding Fathers and the Anglo-Saxons. Even if Columbus, as you say, never even set foot on the land that eventually became the United States.
That has obviously changed by now as Italians have come to be seen as part of the "white majority", and Columbus a tyrant against the native POCs.
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