White House moves Obama portrait to make room for new one of Trump

The Trump administration said Friday that it had moved a portrait of former President Barack Obama in a White House hallway and replaced it with a pop-art painting of President Donald Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign trail in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The shuffling of decor is not uncommon at the White House, where portraits are rotated often. But the new, striking artwork depicting Trump drew criticism from some presidential historians, who could not recall another president hanging a painting of himself during his term in the White House.

Typically, paintings of presidents and first ladies are hung in the White House after they have left office, historians said.

A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment.

The portrait of Obama, which was unveiled in the East Room during the administration of President Joe Biden, shows the former president in a dark suit and silver tie, standing with his hands in his pockets. The background is white; the portrait was based on photographs taken by artist Robert McCurdy.

The new painting shows Trump embraced by a team of Secret Service agents as an American flag billows in a cloudless blue sky behind him. Streaks of red run across his face.

The artwork depicts a scene similar to still images taken after a would-be assassin fired at Trump, hitting him in his ear, during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania in July. The words uttered by a defiant Trump after the shooting -- "Fight! Fight! Fight!" -- became a rally cry for his supporters.

The painting of Trump is on a wall opposite from Obama's, the White House said, adding that Trump's was placed in the spot for the newest presidential portrait.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the "executive mansion is the president's home, and he has the right to make changes as other presidents have in the past."

"President Trump decided to temporarily display this painting, which represents a pivotal moment in history when he nearly lost his life," she added. "Only The New York Times would find a problem with this."

Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at the City University of New York and a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, said he was surprised to see the new artwork.

"It just seems tacky," Widmer said. "It feels different from our tradition of venerating the distinguished holders of the office from both parties -- and going in a new direction of walking around looking at images of yourself all day long."

But Julian E. Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said the move fit into a pattern.

"In the second term, it's not just winning the White House," Zelizer said of Trump. "He's always had intense animosity for President Obama, all the way back to the early 2010s. And I think this time around, he really wants to show that he has -- in his mind -- supplanted him."

Barbara A. Perry, a presidential studies professor at the University of Virginia, said she found the style of the painting, with blood on Trump's face, particularly "odd."

"Can you imagine Gerald Ford having a portrait painted of himself ducking?" Perry said of an assassination attempt against Ford, the 38th president, in 1975. She added, "This would be viewed as lacking in taste in days gone by."