Joe Biden removes bust of Winston Churchill from Oval Office and replaces it with union leader Cesar Chavez
JOE Biden has removed Donald Trump’s bust of Winston Churchill and replaced it with union leader Cesar Chavez after redecorating the Oval Office on his first day as president.
The Oval Office was redone by Wednesday when Biden invited reporters in to observe him sign 15 executive orders.
A Winston Churchill bust, which brought in after his predecessor Barack Obama replaced a different version with one of Martin Luther King Jr, has been swapped with a bust of labour leader Cesar Chavez.
A Churchill bust was first displayed in the Oval Office during George W Bush’s time as president, after Tony Blair, then prime minister, loaned it to him for the duration of his time in office as a personal gift.
When Obama became president the bust was returned to the British embassy, but when Trump took over he brought in a different version – which the White House has had since the 1960s and had previously been on display in the private living area of the building.
The bust of Chavez sits alongside framed photographs of Biden’s family members.
Chavez, who died in 1993, founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 – now known as the United Farm Workers.
In September 1965, he began leading what became a five-year strike by grape pickers and a nationwide boycott of California grapes which attracted liberal support throughout the country.
Subsequent battles with lettuce growers, table-grape growers, and other agribusinesses ended with the signing of bargaining agreements.
He was willing to sacrifice his own life for his long-standing beliefs and fasted many times.
In recognition of his non-violent activism and support of working people, Chavez was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. His wife, Helen, accepted the award.
The bust, which had been at the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California, was sent to Washington at the request of the White House, according to the Cesar Chavez Foundation.
Paul F. Chavez, the president of the foundation, said: “Placing a bust of my father in the Oval Office symbolizes the hopeful new day that is dawning for our nation.
“That isn’t just because it honors my dad, but more importantly because it represents faith and empowerment for an entire people on whose behalf he fought and sacrificed.”
A NEW LOOK
The newly redecorated Oval Office also features busts of civil rights leaders King and Rosa Parks, as well as ex-President John F Kennedy.
Among a number of family photos, the 46th president placed a picture of his late son Beau Biden – who died of brain cancer in 2015 – holding his younger brother Hunter.
On a table behind the Resolute Desk, Biden has also displayed pictures of Pope Francis, his mother Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, his wife Jill, son Hunter, daughter Ashley, and his grandchildren.
Trump’s gold curtains were gone and replaced with curtains of a darker shade of gold which ex-President Bill Clinton used.
The gold and yellow rug was also taken away and replaced with a dark blue rug.
Biden also removed Trump’s portrait of ex-President Andrew Jackson, who made money from slave labour and allowed thousands of Native Americans to die during his term.
Instead, Biden hung portraits of former presidents Franklin D Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
According to the , Oval Office operations deputy director Ashley Williams said it was “important for President Biden to walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as president”.
A Biden spokesperson told that the office underwent a makeover on Wednesday and shows that “differences of opinion, expressed within the guardrails of the Republic, are essential to democracy”.
