A bronze likeness of British wartime leader and scourge of Nazism Sir Winston Churchill given to America by the British government in July 2001 has been returned to the Oval Office — again — as part of President Donald Trump’s inauguration redecoration.
While redecorating the Oval Office for an incoming President to reflect their tastes and needs — changing curtains, for instance, and the large oval rug over the decorative timber floor — has become a normal part of the inauguration day handover, the presence of the bust of Churchill has become a political matter. Having sat in the Oval Office after being made a gift in 2001 for seven years, the bust was removed by President Barack Obama upon his inauguration in 2009 and replaced with one of Martin Luther King Jr.
This was met with controversy and allegations President Obama had demoted the Churchill Bust to a corridor in the Residence because of anti-British sentiment, something his administration later denied.
President Trump restored the bust when he took power in 2017 following lobbying by Brexit’s Nigel Farage. Speaking in 2016 of a meeting he had with then President-Elect Trump, Mr Farage had said he was “especially pleased at his very positive reaction to the idea that Sir Winston Churchill’s bust should be put back in the Oval Office”.
President Trump made a point of showing the Churchill bust to then-British Prime Minister Theresa May when she visited the White House in 2017.
But the story didn’t end there, with President Joe Biden again removing the Churchill bust in 2021, adding busts of Robert F. Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt instead. Biden also removed the flags of the branches of the U.S. armed forces from the Office, something else Trump had returned to their place this week.
Now it is noted the bust has returned once again, having been photographed in the Oval Office as President Trump sat in the room signing executive orders, the bronze cast placed on a side table near the fireplace, which is where it had been before it was removed by Biden.
While it may be the most apparently controversial, the bust is not the only British artefact in the Oval Office. The famous Resolute Desk which has been used by every U.S. President since Jimmy Carter was a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 from Britain’s Queen Victoria.
It was reported in 2022 that Joe Biden’s sister had attempted to have the Resolute Desk removed from the Oval Office and replaced with the desk of President Franklin D. Roosevelt — which coincidentally Winston Churchill also sat at when he visited the White House in 1941 — just because it had been sat at by Donald Trump. She failed in this endeavour as the desired desk is on display at the Roosevelt Library and Museum, it was stated.
Breitbart News
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