Quote:
Originally Posted by Don T. Lukbak
This whole fuckin' thread is moot because, as errrybody knows, Obama rendered Winnie an unperson. Along with Andy Jackson, Bobby Lee, Stonewall, John Wayne, Gen. Mattis, Jeff Davis, and John Paul II. He's channeling his inner Stalin.
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Another liar. Are you talking about Winnie's bust? To clear up that lie:
The bust in question, by British sculptor Jacob Epstein, was given to President George W Bush by the British government in 2001 and was placed in the Oval Office. But the statue was not donated, it was simply on loan for Bush’s term in office (a loan which the British government decided to extend when Bush was re-elected in 2004). Churchill disappeared from the White House in 2009, when the loan ended at the same time that Obama moved in.
So how was the White House able to claim in 2012 that the bust was still there? When writing the blogpost, the then communications director Dan Pfeiffer simply neglected to mention the fact that there are two Churchill busts – the one on loan to Bush from 2001 to 2009, and a second bust which the White House has had since the 1960s and still has to this day – a fact which Pfeiffer later had to clarify in an update at the end of the post.
Boris Johnson is wrong to claim that the vanishing Churchill bust symbolizes Obama’s antipathy towards Britain – it was never Obama’s statue to give away. But the White House’s initial claim that the bust was still in the Oval Office was also a convenient spin on the facts.
The Guardian’s David Smith made a confirmed sighting of the other bust – the one given to George W Bush, when he interviewed the outgoing British ambassador in December last year. Sir Peter Westmacott said the bust was only ever on loan as a personal gift from Tony Blair to George W Bush for the duration of his presidency.
“So, to be honest, we always expected that to leave the Oval Office just like everything else that a president has tends to be changed.”
Speaking at his joint press conference with David Cameron in London, President Obama confirmed that there was a bust of Churchill in the White House residence outside of his office, which he saw every day. “I love Churchill,” he said, before describing the lack of space and risk of “clutter” in the Oval Office.
As the first African-American president, he thought it right to have a bust of Rev Martin Luther King Jr in the Oval Office “to remind him of the people who helped get him there”.
The bust of Dr King sits on a table alongside the fireplace and is often pictured as Obama meets visiting dignitaries for talks.
