A statue of Winston Churchill’s head has been in the political football game for more than 15 years, with Democrat presidents removing it from the Oval Office and President Trump putting it back up again.
The bronze bust of Sir Winston Churchill, the British wartime leader and scourge of Nazism, given to the US by the British government in July 2001, has been returned to the Oval Office – again as part of President Donald Trump’s inaugural redecoration.
Redecorating the Oval Office for the incoming president to reflect his tastes and needs – for example, changing the curtains, and the large oval rug on the decorative wood floor – has become a common part of the Inauguration Day handover, The presence of the statue of Churchill has become a political matter. After occupying the Oval Office for seven years after being gifted in 2001, President Barack Obama removed the statue at his inauguration in 2009 and replaced it with a statue of Martin Luther King Jr.
It faced controversy and allegations that President Obama had torn down the Churchill statue in a corridor of his residence due to anti-British sentiment, which his administration later denied.
President Trump restored the statue after taking power in 2017 following Nigel Farage’s lobbying for Brexit. Speaking at a meeting with then-President-elect Trump in 2016, Mr Farage said he was “particularly pleased by his positive reaction to the idea that the statue of Sir Winston Churchill should be placed back in the Oval Office “.
President Trump had raised the issue of showing Churchill’s statue to then-British Prime Minister Theresa May when she visited the White House in 2017.
But the story didn’t end there, President Joe Biden removed Churchill’s statue again in 2021, and replaced it with statues of Robert F. Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Biden also removed the flags of the US armed forces branches from the office, something Trump returned to their place this week.
It has now been revealed that the statue is back once again, having been photographed in the Oval Office as President Trump sat in the room to sign executive orders, placing the bronze statue on a side table near the fireplace. Gone, which was there earlier. Removed by Biden.
While it may be the most obviously controversial, this statue is not the only British artwork in the Oval Office. The famous Resolute Desk, which has been used by every US president since Jimmy Carter, was given to President Rutherford B. Johnson on behalf of Britain’s Queen Victoria in 1880. Hayes had a gift.
In 2022, it was reported that Joe Biden’s sister had attempted to remove the Resolute Desk from the Oval Office and replace it with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s desk—which, coincidentally, Winston Churchill also sat at when he left office in 1941. Had visited the White House – simply because Donald Trump was sitting on it. It was said that she failed in this attempt because the desired desk is on display at the Roosevelt Library and Museum.
