Trump Adds Another Statue to White House Rose Garden Overnight

President Trump has installed yet another statue in the Rose Garden as part of his massive overhaul of the White House grounds.

Anonymous sources told The Washington Post that a life-size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson last week joined Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and a “Freedom’s Charge” statue depicting the Revolutionary War. The Jefferson statue, which was sculpted by George Lundeen and shows the former president seated next to the Declaration of Independence, has yet to be announced.

The Franklin, Hamilton, and “Freedom’s Charge” statues were loaned by conservative activist, billionaire real estate mogul, and Republican donor Harlan Crow. The White House has only said the statues come from “generous private American patriots.”

Trump reportedly privately called Lundeen to thank him for the new addition to the Rose Garden. “When you’re a farm boy from the middle of Nebraska, it’s kind of neat to get a call from the president,” said Lundeen, who also built a seven-foot statue of Trump for his West Palm Beach golf club based on his “fight, fight, fight” moment after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “You get a call like that, and you don’t know if it is one of your buddies playing a trick on you. If it’s a hoax, it’s a really good one.”

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the president’s recent statuary efforts.

“All told, the statues dating to his second term are of negligible artistic value,” Maxwell Anderson, the former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, told the Post. “President Trump’s embrace of an official classicizing style in art and architecture finds its closest equivalent in authoritarian regimes.”

From the entire East Wing of the White House to the Reflecting Pool disaster, to these pointless statues that no regular people will ever see, it’s clear that the president’s priorities lie more in decor than in governance. ...