If you’ve been anywhere near Donald Trump’s social media in the past decade, you know that he is very particular about his image. Depictions of Trump — as seen in his eternally cringe NFTs, Ben Garrison cartoons, memes, and AI-generated fan slop — rarely fail to depict him as anything other than a chiseled, hard jawed, heroic figure with a full head of hair and a physique manosphere influencers would kill for. It’s a far cry from the 78-year-old reality that lives in the White House, but over the weekend the president made clear that nothing but the glorification of his image is acceptable for public display.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social. “The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one, but many people from Colorado have called and written to complain.”
The president called on Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, to have the painting taken down, and then posted multiple photos of himself more to his taste. The 2019 painting was not, in fact, commissioned by Polis, but by Colorado Republicans, and was based off of a photo of the president approved by a bipartisan committee. In 2018, Colorado Springs artist Sarah Boardman, who painted the portrait, told the Colorado Times Recorder that she chose to portray the president with a “serious, non-confrontational, thoughtful” expression, in alignment with the depictions of past presidents on display in the Capitol.
“Perceptions of presidential power change with the times and official portraits are merely portals to those lives, to be accepted or rejected by each viewer. Formal official portraits, over generations, have stood on their own merit, leaving the legacy of the subject for the viewer to accept or reject,” she told the outlet in 2019.
It seems that Trump has outright rejected Boardman’s interpretation of his likeness. The thing is, it’s really not that bad. Maybe his cheeks are a little fuller than the flesh-and-bone man, but it’s definitely him — and it’s no purposeful distortion, as Trump claimed.
If the president wants to look at something more to his taste, he can spend some time contemplating the painting which, according to a weekend report from The Washington Post, was commissioned and gifted to him by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s surely a stunner.
