The bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office was a symbol of the unity between two proud nations that, despite differences through the years, remained formidable allies.
Now that bust will reportedly be making a return to the White House and Oval Office after President Obama had it removed nearly eight years ago.
United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who at times campaigned for president-elect Donald Trump, said Tuesday that the Churchill bust will take back its rightful place in the White House to show solidarity with the U.K.
Farage told Express in the U.K.:
At the end of our time with Trump we asked him if the bust of Sir Winston Churchill that Obama had removed from the Oval Office could be put back in its rightful place. He enthusiastically thought that was a good idea. Need I say more?
While that doesn’t sound like a guarantee, it does pose well for the U.K., which saw its relationship with the United States strained, especially after the "Brexit" vote in which public chose to leave the European Union.
When the U.K. was about to go to a vote to determine whether they would leave the EU, President Obama made a threat to influence voters.
“The UK is going to be in the back of the queue,” Obama said.
While former Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer wrote an article for the White House website attempting to debunk rumors that the bust had been completely removed from the White House, it was noted that there were two busts of Churchill. The original bust had indeed been returned to the British embassy, while a second bust was displayed outside the treaty room in the White House.
On a side note, in Pfeiffer’s White House article denying the removal of the bust, he mentioned that Obama replaced it with a bust of Abraham Lincoln, “a figure from whom the first African-American occupant of the Oval Office might well draw inspiration in difficult times.”
However, when Obama commented on the matter in April of this year, he said that he had replaced the Churchill bust with a bust of prominent black civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Either one would be perfectly fine as a replacement, but why the discrepancy in which bust actually adorns the Oval Office?
Whatever the case might be, the forthcoming administration is seemingly already trying to mend relationships that were damaged over the last eight years.
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