Joe Biden was sleepy, Barack Obama divisive, and Ronald Reagan a fan of the young Trump.
The new plaques on the White House portrait wall, partly written by President Trump himself, are in line with his social media posts in style and content. The descriptions of past presidents contain insults, baseless claims, and liberal use of capitalization and exclamation points.
Under Biden's portrait – which Trump replaced earlier this year with an image of an "autopen", a signing machine that Trump has consistently accused Biden of using to sign all his decisions – Biden is called by far the worst president in American history. He is also accused of fraud in the 2020 election, a claim that has been dismissed in some 60 lawsuits.
“Unprecedented disasters”
“Biden took office as a result of the most corrupt election ever in the United States and governed during a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our nation to the brink of destruction,” the plaque reads, which continues:
“But despite everything, President Trump would be re-elected in a landslide victory and SAVE AMERICA!”
Obama's plaque highlights his allegedly "very ineffective" healthcare reform, Obamacare, as well as his signing of "the unilateral Paris climate agreements."
Writing about history
Several plaques contain references to the current president. Bill Clinton's presentation ends with the statement that his wife Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan's legacy is summarized by saying that he was a Trump supporter "long before President Trump's historic presidential candidacy."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calls the plaques "well-articulated descriptions of each president and the legacies they left behind."
"As a scholar of history, the president wrote many of them himself," she said in a statement.
Donald Trump continues to break with the practice of how presidents treat their predecessors, the AP notes. With the plaques, he is trying to change the writing of American history, the American news agency says.
