President Donald Trump made a startling new addition to the White House’s decor this week, an addition that left journalist Brian Daitzman stunned over what he considered to be its “obscene” message.
People magazine reported this week that Trump had redecorated a White House room with framed photographs of himself with various people, though one immediately caught the attention of Daitzman: a photo of Trump alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’s currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.
“A photograph is not policy. Presidents display images of foreign leaders routinely. But context gives symbols weight,” Daitzman wrote in an analysis published Saturday in his Substack, The Intellectualist. “Placement matters. Timing matters. Symbols matter most when they appear during conflict rather than after it has passed. This image is displayed during an active war in Europe.”
The framed photograph – prominently displayed in the newly renovated White House Palm Room – depicts Trump standing alongside Putin during their last meeting last August in Anchorage, Alaska. That meeting, intended to help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, has largely been viewed as a failure by critics, with the war still raging on months later.
The photograph is also hung directly above a framed photograph of Trump with his six-year-old granddaughter, Carolina.
“The image appears at a moment when U.S. leverage over the war is widely perceived to be declining and when allies are openly questioning American reliability, as reflected in recent European reactions to U.S. policy posture,” Daitzman wrote. “In that setting, the photograph functions less as decoration than as [a] signal.”