President Donald Trump has made yet another change to the White House, adding a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson in the Rose Garden.
The life-like sculpture depicts the Founding Father seated on a bench, quill in hand, with a draft of the Declaration of Independence resting in his lap.
The work is by George Lundeen, a Nebraska-born sculptor whose portfolio also notably includes a towering gold likeness of Trump himself, currently on display at the president’s Doral golf club in Florida.
“I just wanted to thank you. The sculpture looks really beautiful,” the 80-year-old president told Lundeen this month, referring to the statue of the nation’s third president, according to The Washington Post.
The Jefferson statue marks the fifth installation in the Rose Garden, which Trump paved over last summer and has since repurposed as an al fresco dinner venue. The other sculptures depict George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and a contingent of Revolutionary War soldiers.
The president’s aesthetic ambitions extend well beyond the garden: since returning to office, he has embarked on an expansive and costly reimagining of Washington, with projects ranging from a mammoth White House ballroom — now under construction — to a proposed 250-foot victory arch on the banks of the Potomac.
A White House official confirmed to The Independent that the Jefferson sculpture now sits in the Rose Garden.
When reached by the Post, a White House spokesperson said the president is moving to “to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic 250 anniversary celebrations.”
Trump has long been fixated on statues. In the wake of the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s killing — when monuments across the country were defaced, toppled or removed — he responded with a flurry of executive orders.
Those directives called for existing statues to be protected and restored, while also pushing for the construction of new monuments. They further mandated that depictions of historical figures be realistic and lifelike, explicitly barring modernist or abstract designs.
Earlier this month, Trump celebrated the installation of a statue of Caesar Rodney, a Founding Father and slave owner, near the White House, urging Americans to visit it. The imposing bronze figure has been a flashpoint since it was removed at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Mike Purzycki, then mayor of Wilmington, announced in June 2020 that the statue was “removed and stored so there can be an overdue discussion about the public display of historical figures and events.” In April, the Trump administration returned Rodney to public view, installing it prominently in Freedom Plaza.
In March, Trump also unveiled a recreation of a statue of Christopher Columbus that had been taken down in Baltimore in 2020. “In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come,” the White House posted on X.
The administration has framed the moves as a return to “sanity,” earning praise from supporters who oppose so-called “woke” policies. Critics, meanwhile, argue they amount to historical whitewashing, noting that Trump’s approach is not limited to restoration but extends to removal.
Since returning to office, he has signed several executive orders aimed at reshaping how American history is presented, including one directing the Interior Department to eliminate “corrosive” content from government-run institutions.
As a result, a number of displays have been slated for removal, including quotes addressing slavery and immigration at the Bunker Hill Monument in Massachusetts. Signs referencing Native American history and climate change at national parks have also been targeted.
A series of unflattering sculptures of Trump — including several depicting him alongside Jeffrey Epstein — have quickly been removed after they cropped up near the Capitol.
Read MoreThe men behind Trump's $3.47 gas: An NFL coach, a GOP fundraiser and two New Jersey brothers
Iran war live: Tehran tells Trump ‘our missiles will rain down on you for years’
.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp&trim=25%2C0%2C25%2C0)
