WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump, who has made no mystery of his enmity for his Democratic predecessors, recently took things a step further with unorthodox White House plaques repeating his long-standing grievances against the former leaders.

The ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ is a recent addition during Trump’s second term, featuring portraits of past presidents displayed along corridors between the Oval Office and the South Lawn.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the plaques were an “eloquent” description of each president’s legacy.

“As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself,” she said in a statement.

On Wednesday, journalists allowed access to the famed West Colonnade noted that new plaques had been installed under the presidents’ photos.

Joe Biden’s photo replaced with autopen; Reagan said to have been ‘Trump fan’ long before White House bid

An introductory plaque states that the Presidential Walk of Fame was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump” as a tribute to former presidents described as “good, bad, and somewhere in the middle”.

The descriptions for former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama were strikingly negative.

Biden, whom Trump succeeded this year, is the only president not to have a portrait and is instead represented by a photo of an autopen – a mechanical device that replicates a signature with a pen or other writing implement.

The substitution is a reference to Trump’s claim that Biden, who left office in January aged 82, was so senile that he did not know what was being signed in his name.

He is described as “by far, the worst President in American history”. The plaque also repeats Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Another plaque refers to “Barack Hussein Obama”, the first Black US president, and describes the two-term president as “one of the most divisive political figures in American history”.

It also includes his middle name, Hussein — as Trump often does when referring to his Democratic predecessor — after having stoked conspiracy theories about the 44th president’s birthplace.

Derisive commentary

The plaque accompanying Bill Clinton’s photo reads: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”

Even former President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican but not a Trump supporter, does not escape criticism. His plaque says Bush started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “both of which should not have happened”.

Some of the biographies read like standard historical summaries, only with slight Trump twists. John F. Kennedy’s plaque refers to the 35th president’s “painful setback” from the “failed Bay of Pigs Invasion”.

The plaque for Harry S Truman calls the Democratic president’s domestic agenda a “so-called Fair Deal”.

Ronald Reagan’s plaque — along with touting his record during the Cold War — claims the Republican icon was “a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before” his White House run.

As for the incumbent, his bio is expectedly glowing.

It states that he ended eight conflicts in eight months, a figure viewed as inaccurate, and that he attracted an unverifiable sum of trillions of dollars in investment to the United States.

The billionaire real estate developer has torn down the entire East Wing to make way for an extravagant ballroom, added copious amounts of gold to the Oval Office and other rooms, and hung portraits of himself — contrary to the custom of the president’s image only being displayed after leaving office.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2025