US President Donald Trump has installed a plaque below the portraits of all the country’s commanders in chief, including himself, on his presidential Walk of Fame at the White House. What really caught people’s attention are the words he used to describe two of his immediate predecessors – Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
The latest controversial change in the White House under Donald Trump, the plaques were first seen on Wednesday.
The plaques are a striking addition, as both Republicans and Democrats have traditionally viewed the historic building as a symbol of national unity. The “Presidential Walk of Fame,” as Trump has called it, is a portrait gallery along the west wing colonnade. They describe the terms of office of former presidents of the United States in an overtly political way.
The plaques include Donald Trump’s signature bombastic language and random capital letters along with exclamation points just like his social media posts. They also highlight Trump’s strained relationship with his more recent predecessors.
An introductory plaque tells viewers that the exhibit was “conceived, built and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past presidents, the good, the bad and somewhere in between.”
Joe Biden plaque
Joe Biden, who served as President of the United States from 2020 to 2024, is still the only president on display whose gilded portrait has not been recognized. For him, Trump chose a photo of an autopen, a mechanical device, to represent his mockery of Biden’s age as he claimed he was incapable of the job.
A plaque below a photo of President Joe Biden reads: “Sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history.
It also accuses him of taking office “on the back of the most corrupt election ever seen in the United States,” adding that “Biden has overseen a series of unprecedented disasters that have brought our nation to the brink of destruction.”
Barack Obama plaque
The 44th president is described as “a community organizer, a one-term senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American history.”
The plaque also calls Obama’s signature domestic achievement the “highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable Care Act.’
He goes on to note that Trump has violated other major Obama accomplishments: “the terrible Iran nuclear deal … and the one-sided Paris climate accords.”
Barack Obama’s plaque ends with the false allegation that he “monitored the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia, and Russia scam, the worst political scandal in American history.”
