(thetimes.com)
Barack Obama was a “divisive” president and Joe Biden “by far, the worst President in American History”, according to White House plaques installed by President Trump.
The partisan messages appear beneath portraits of former presidents on Trump’s presidential walk of fame, and his staff say they were largely the work of the present leader of the free world.
“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each president and the legacy they left behind,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said. “As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself.”
Complete with the capitalisation of words regularly seen in the president’s Truth Social posts, the additions emphasise Trump’s difficult relationships with his more recent predecessors.
An introductory plaque to the installation in the colonnade, which runs from the West Wing to the residence, tells viewers it was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle”.
The plaque under Biden, which has a painting of an autopen instead of the 46th president, names him “Sleepy Joe” and blames him for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also falsely asserts that Biden was elected fraudulently in 2020. “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst president in American history,” it reads. It also accuses Biden of overseeing “a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction”. The entrance to the presidential walk of fame MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AP • Republicans ‘coached on how to respond to Epstein files’ Obama is described as “a community organiser, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History”. The 44th president’s plaque lambasts Obama’s signature achievements, renaming the Affordable Care Act “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable Care Act’” and describing the Iran nuclear deal as “terrible”. ANDREW LEYDEN/ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK ANDREW LEYDEN/ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK Under Bill Clinton’s portrait, Trump mentions his rivalry with Hillary Clinton, whom he beat to win the presidency the first time: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!” ANDREW LEYDEN/ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK Republicans are not left unscathed. George W Bush’s plaque decries that he “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened”. However, another plaque, for Ronald Reagan, praises the actor turned president and asserts that the 1980s leader “was a fan” of Trump. Under the disgraced president Richard Nixon’s portrait, who resigned after the Watergate scandal, the plaque notes that he “pursued detente with the Soviet Union”. ANDREW LEYDEN/ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK Trump has two portraits, one for each of his presidencies. His latest plaque concludes “THE BEST IS YET TO COME”.
