Donald Trump has reinstated a bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the Oval Office, having also brought the sculpture back into the room in 2017.
Despite a hectic schedule after being sworn in, Mr Trump found some time to rearrange furniture in the White House and promptly ordered the return of the sculpture on Tuesday. Made by Sir Jacob Epstein, it was originally gifted to George W Bush by the British government in 2001.
Democrat Barack Obama subsequently caused a minor diplomatic rift by shifting the bust to a table outside the White House’s Treaty Room when he took office in 2008, giving its spot to one of Dr Martin Luther King Jr instead.
His doing so prompted criticism from then-London mayor Boris Johnson, the future PM and Churchill biographer, who suggested that Mr Obama had been motivated by an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire”.
Mr Trump reinstated it when he succeeded President Obama, making a point of posing in front of it with then-UK prime minister Theresa May during her visit to the White House in January 2017, a week after his first inauguration.
When Mr Trump was ousted four years ago, Joe Biden moved it out again to make way for busts of civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.
Churchill is now once more perched on a side table on the right-hand side of the Oval Office’s fireplace.
The president has often been flatteringly compared to Churchill by his admirers, notably American Spectator magazine and TV presenter Piers Morgan, who once gifted him a replica of Churchill’s trademark Homburg hat as an interview stunt.
Former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly also advised Mr Trump to study Churchill last year to win over the American public.
Mr Trump has also not been shy about drawing the parallel himself, telling a campaign rally in Michigan in September 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic: “As the British government advised the British people in the face of World War II, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. That’s what I did.
“When Hitler was bombing, I don’t know if you know this, when Hitler was bombing London, Churchill, great leader, would oftentimes go to a roof in London and speak.
“And he always spoke with calmness. He said we have to show calmness. No, we did it the right way and we’ve done a job like nobody.”
His move to bring back the sculpture was predicted earlier this week by Trump ally and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who told The Daily Express: “Is Donald Trump going to return the Winston Churchill bust to the Oval Office?
“Good Lord, yes. On day one? Of course he is. Don’t be ridiculous. And that says it all.
“This is the most pro-British president since [Dwight] Eisenhower. We’ve got somebody who is very, very much his mother’s son.
“His mum may have left the Western Isles when she was young but she kept that affiliation. Trump as a teenager came to Scotland a lot and spent a lot of time there.”
Mr Trump is certainly proud of his connections to Britain through his mother Mary Anne MacLeod’s Scottish roots and owns the 18-hole Trump International Golf Links course in Aberdeenshire, as well as the Trump MacLeod House and Lodge.
