President Donald Trump appears to have a lot of opinions about his predecessors, and the latest installation in the White House puts his thoughts on full display.
The new “The Presidential Walk of Fame,” which lines the West Wing colonnade, sports partisan plaques under each president’s portrait overwhelmingly imbued with jabs and insults.
A plaque at the beginning of the exhibit explains that the gallery “was conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle, who served our Country.”
The plaques make up only a fraction of the additions Trump has made to the White House during his second term, including demolishing the East Wing, paving the rose garden and adding a plethora of gold finishes in the Oval Office.
A framed portrait of an autopen, meant to depict President Joe Biden, was unveiled when the gallery was opened in September. It symbolizes Trump’s long-running attacks accusing his immediate predecessor of using an autopen during his presidency, though Biden has repeatedly denied the accusation.
Two plaques hang under the autopen portrait. In one, Trump mocks Biden as “Sleepy Joe Biden,” adding that “he was, by far, the worst President in American History.”
The plaque reads that Biden “took office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States.” Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Biden. But there has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and Biden won the election by both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
A second plaque leans into the insults, claiming in part that Biden “was dominated by his Radical Left handlers,” adding, “But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”
Former President Barack Obama’s plaque blasts the 44th president as “one of the most divisive political figures in American History.” It bashes the Obama administration, arguing, “He passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act,” and later claiming that Obama “presided over a stagnant Economy.”
By the end of the Obama administration in 2016, before Trump took office, the economy had seen 76 consecutive months of job growth, unemployment had dropped and the annual median household income had increased.
Former President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, did not dodge pointed criticism. Bush’s plaque blames him for starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, adding “both of which should not have happened.” Responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush ordered the United States to target Afghanistan in an effort to remove the Taliban from power and disrupt al-Qaeda. The Iraq War was an armed conflict between a U.S.-led coalition force against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the plaques “eloquent” in a statement to MS NOW, adding that “many” of the descriptions were written by Trump.
“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,” Leavitt said.
Not all of the plaques were overrun with insults. Former President Ronald Reagan’s features a list touting his agenda, and he’s painted as “a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House.”
Vaughn Hillyard is a senior White House reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW.