Former President Barack Obama’s portrait will not grace White House walls anytime soon, and the establishment media are blaming President Donald Trump.
Typically, an official commissioned portrait of the last president is unveiled in an East Room ceremony with the current president, who makes glowing remarks about his predecessor before revealing the portrait.
The painting of the last president’s countenance is honorably hung in the White House among other portraits of former presidents.
According to NBC News, however, neither Trump nor former President Barack Obama is interested in participating in this tradition that goes back decades.
But these two are not just any presidents: They have had a highly contentious public relationship.
Recently, Obama took the opportunity of video commencement addresses to take shots at Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
For his part, Trump has been vocal about the Obama administration’s role in unmasking the identity of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in a scandal dubbed “Obamagate.”
“You’ve got a president who’s talking about putting the previous one in legal jeopardy, to put it nicely,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss told NBC News.
“We have not seen a situation like that in history,” he said. “It takes antipathy of a new president for a predecessor to a new level.”
Despite how Beschloss described it, people close to the matter reportedly confirmed that Obama would not be interested in taking part in the ceremony as long as Trump was president, meaning the former president’s portrait could remain absent until 2025 if Trump is re-elected.
Trump apparently wasn’t disappointed to nix the event either, according to those same sources.
Still, liberals are furious at the supposed attack on Obama’s honor.
