Donald Trump to wage war on woke with Winston Churchill bust as starting point

Incoming US President Donald Trump is set to wage a war on woke…with a little help from Sir Winston Churchill.

The first thing the new Commander-in-Chief will do after his inauguration on January 20, according to sources close to the transition, is rearrange the furniture in the Oval Office – replacing a bust of union leader César Chávez with one of Britain’s fabled wartime leader.

Joe Biden, who beat Trump in the 2020 election, but was replaced as Democratic nominee by Kamala Harris in July because of long-standing fears over his cognitive ability, proudly placed sculptures of Chávez, the American labour leader and Latin American activist, Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and Robert Kennedy when he first assumed office.

But Trump, who romped to victory at the November 5 poll, will make redecorating the most famous office in the world a priority and ensure the bronze bust of the British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Britain’s Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, is dusted off and becomes the centrepiece of his nerve centre.

The move reinforces the 78-year-old president-elect’s staunch allegiance to Britain and what it stands for, despite being cool on the Labour government and what it stands for.

Chávez, whose non-violent activism and support for working people saw him posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, died in 1993.

Trump, 78, is a self-proclaimed Anglophile whose mother was Scottish. He owns two golf courses in the UK and described the late Queen Elizabeth II as “fantastic”, saying he loves the institution of the monarchy and the history and importance of our Royal Family.

He has previously described Sir Winston, who died aged 90 on January 24, 1965 – almost exactly 60 years to the day that Trump will be sworn in for a second time – as his “idol” and called the Oscar-winning 2017 film The Darkest Hour, which starring Gary Oldman as Churchill, as “my favourite film ever”.

Before he was ousted President Biden, 81, signed an executive order making March 31 César Chávez Day to honour his legacy but anti-woke campaigner, tech billionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who will lead a new department for government efficiency, said: “America voted for major government reform.”

On the X social media platform Musk owns, one Republican said: “Every single person with a shred of common sense is absolutely tired of the woke crap. It had a good run from 2014-2022. Now it is floundering and losing disciples. Time for a new Renaissance.” Musk, 53, simply responded: “Absolutely!”

Jacob Epstein’s bronze bust of Sir Winston was completed in 1947. Some 16 are thought to exist.

Epstein was an American and British artist who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the States, but moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.

He was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to create a sculpture of the former British PM in August 1945, after the end of the Second World War and shortly after Churchill lost the UK general election the same year.

Two casts have been previously displayed in the Oval Office. Another remains on display in the atrium of Churchill College, Cambridge.

A cast was donated to the White House in 1965, under the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, by a group of American wartime friends of Churchill. In recent years, this cast has been displayed on the second floor of the White House, outside the Treaty Room, which is now part of the President’s private rooms.

At a 2015 press conference, President Barack Obama confirmed the cast was moved partially to make way for a new bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office. It was temporarily moved back into the Oval Office in January 2017, after President Trump’s first inauguration, until it was replaced by a cast from the British Government Art Collection.

Many pro-Brexit supporters hope Trump’s tenure as leader of the free world will signal a reset in flagging Anglo-American relations.

President Biden displayed what critics described as an antagonistic attuned towards the UK throughout a 50-year political career. When a lowly senator from Delaware in the 1980s, he campaigned to stop a change in American extradition law favoured by then President Reagan. It would have removed “political exemption” clauses, thus allowing suspected IRA terrorists in the US to be sent to Britain for trial.

Years after negotiations started, Britain and the US are no closer to signing an historic trade deal. Talks began on May 5, 2020. In December of that year the countries signed an agreement on trading terms from previous United States-European Union agreements.

But President Biden was never in a hurry to help, especially as he was Vice President in the Barack Obama administration when he famously said on a visit here on the eve of the 2016 referendum that Britain would join the “back of the queue” if it voted to leave the EU, adding “part of being friends is being honest”. Biden continued his former boss’s attitude.

His gaffe-strewn visit to Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2023 saw him say: “I know it has made things more complicated” in reference to Brexit.

And a year earlier during a visit to Israel​, President Biden took a pop at the British, saying: “The background of my family is Irish-American, and we have a long history not unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years.”