Ehhh, what?
We imagine it’s high on a lot of people’s wish list, the opportunity to have a beer with a prominent leader from the past.
For President Donald Trump, he seems to have visualised doing just that, in the form of a painting hanging at the White House that caused a huge uproar on social media when it was revealed over the weekend.
The Republican Club, by artist Andy Thomas, was in the background as Trump conducted a recent interview with 60 Minutes, the same one where he said climate change will change back again.
The painting is a portrait of Republican presidents from years past laughing around a table of drinks including Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, George W Bush… and Donald Trump in the middle of them all.
https://twitter.com/jbillinson/status/1051627281687478272
The portrait was spotted in an image tweeted by 60 Minutes before their report featuring an interview of President Trump by reporter Lesley Stahl.
Now on 60 Minutes: There's less than a month until the mid-term elections. Hear what President Trump has to say about some of the issues that will likely be motivating voters at the ballot. pic.twitter.com/4WYnh3t0hy
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 14, 2018
In an interview, Thomas told the Daily Beast the print was given to the president by Darrell Issa, the California Republican.
“He had actually given a me real gracious call to tell me how much he liked it,” Thomas said. “He was very complimentary.
“He made a comment that he’d seen a lot of paintings of himself and he rarely liked them.”
The White House is a home for temporary residents and there’s a long history of artistic preservation. A president can get access to works from the Smithsonian and other museums around the country for his or her private residence if they wish.
Trump’s choice to hang the picture prominently at the White House, among hundreds of classical or historical works of art, caused somewhat of a stir on social media.
Main image via Twitter
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