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WASHINGTON — Months after President Donald Trump refashioned a West Wing walkway into what he calls the Presidential Walk of Fame, he has added partisan and subjective plaques to the display, deepening his fingerprints on the White House’s aesthetic and continuing his effort to bend the telling of history to his liking.
From “Sleepy Joe” Biden references to painting Republican icon Ronald Reagan as a fan of a young Trump, the plaques include bombastic language written in Trumpian style. The installation is the Republican president’s latest move to shape the White House in his image, an effort that has spanned from adorning the Oval Office to razing the East Wing in preparation for a massive ballroom addition.
An introductory plaque tells passersby that the Presidential Walk of Fame was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.”
Biden’s plaque repeats false claims that the 46th president, a Democrat, took office “as a result of the most corrupt election ever,” when, in fact, he defeated Trump in 2020 in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Biden is also described as “by far, the worst president in American history.”
Another Democrat, Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president and Trump’s first presidential predecessor, is labeled “one of the most divisive political figures in American history.”
The plaque below former President George W. Bush’s portrait appears to approve of the Republican’s creation of the Department of Homeland Security but decries that he “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the texts are “eloquently written descriptions of each president” and that “many were written directly by the President himself.”
Biden had no comment on his plaque. There were no immediate responses to emails sent to aides for Obama and several other former presidents.
Trump, in September, refashioned the colonnade that runs from the West Wing to the White House residence with gilded portraits of all former presidents, except for Biden. Trump instead chose an autopen, reflecting his mockery of Biden’s age and assertions that Biden was not up to the job.
The display runs on the wall of the colonnade between the White House residence and the president’s usual entrance to the Oval Office, meaning Trump can take any of his preferred guests – foreign dignitaries included – on a tour of the exhibit with his framing of his predecessors.
The introductory plaque also presumes that Trump’s addition will stay intact once he is no longer president: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”
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