Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump has continued his makeover of the White House, adding a statue of Christopher Columbus and laying new black granite paving stones on the famed West Wing colonnade. The marble figure of Columbus, the 15th-century Italian explorer who forged a reputation for brutality in his voyages to the New World, is a replica of one toppled by anti-racism protesters in the city of Baltimore in 2020.
“Christopher Columbus was the original American hero and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the Earth,” Trump said in a letter dated Sunday to an Italian-American organization that gifted the statue. It appeared without fanfare on Sunday in a courtyard in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House campus in Washington. Last year, Trump, a Republican, signed a proclamation for the annual Columbus Day holiday, forgoing a similar honor for Indigenous American history introduced under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Separately, Trump said he was replacing the decades-old sandstone paving stones in the colonnade, the pillared walkway that leads from the main White House mansion to the Oval Office. “It’s a great contrast. The white, with the black,” Trump told reporters as he showed them the ongoing work after a ceremony to swear in new Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. “It’s a beautiful, black granite.” Asked who was paying for the new walkway, Trump replied: “Me.”
Trump has turned the once sparsely decorated colonnade into a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” complete with gold-framed portraits and scathing captions about some of his predecessors. The colonnade runs alongside the Rose Garden, where Trump paved over the grass last year. It has provided the backdrop for iconic photos of US presidents for decades and is often dubbed the “45-second commute” as it takes the commander-in-chief from the Oval Office to private quarters.
The new additions are among a host of construction works and makeovers that former Trump, a property developer and reality TV star, has carried out at the White House since returning to office in January 2025. The biggest of them is the construction of a huge $400 million ballroom, for which Trump demolished the entire East Wing of the US presidential residence.
© 2024 AFP
