President Donald Trump has spent much of his time as president taking potshots at former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Now, amid changes that Trump has been implementing at the White House, comes a new and especially petty example of Trump’s vendetta against his presidential predecessors.
Trump uses White House exhibition to take shots at past presidents
At the behest of Trump, new plaques have been added to various presidential portraits on display at the White House. The write-ups for President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden have been drawing attention for the petty shots taken against them. Biden’s “portrait,” a picture of an autopen signing the former president’s name, has been affixed with two plaques that heavily criticize Biden’s term in office while lauding Trump. “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History” begins the first plaque, while the second starts by saying, “Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked,’ Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers.”
Obama’s portrait now has two plaques below it. The first begins, “Barack Hussein Obama was the first Black president, a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History.” The plaques go on to criticize various domestic and foreign policy initiatives by Obama. The plaques also mention “Donald J. Trump” by name three times, equal to the number of times that ”Obama” appears in these captions.
Trump continues petty use of White House portraits
The attacks against Biden and Obama are part of a larger series of updated descriptions attached to the portraits of presidents along the so-called “Presidential Wall of Fame” at the White House. The new series of descriptions were “conceived, built, and dedicated” by Trump “as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad and somewhere in the middle, who served our Country, and gave up so much in so doing,” according to a display at the exhibit. Earlier presidents such as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Jimmy Carter receive more favorable remarks in their captions.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CNN that “the plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself.” Although she did not confirm whether or not Trump authored the Obama and Biden plaques, the content echoes Trump’s rhetoric, while the turns of phrase and unusual use of capitalization are reminiscent of Trump’s social media posts. The new descriptions continue a trend of Trump using the presidential portraits at the White House in juvenile and childish ways, including moving portraits of Obama and George W. Bush out of public viewing spaces and replacing Biden’s portrait with the picture of an autopen.
As Trump uses his return to the White House to settle scores with political opponents, he has been particularly petty in his dealings with the presidents who came immediately before him. The new White House plaques disparaging Obama and Biden are an especially juvenile slight by Trump.