With Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the bust of Winston Churchill has reappeared there, once again highlighting the divide over Churchill by Republican and Democratic leaders in this country — a divide that began with President Obama when he removed the Churchill bust that had been placed prominently in the oval office by George W. Bush. Bush received the bust as a symbol of the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. in July 2001.

Apparently, there are two Churchill busts. The original bust was given to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Decades later when that was being restored by specialists, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent a second bust that matched the original in appearance. When Obama became president, the second copy was returned to Britain while the original bust was placed in the White House residence instead of the Oval Office.
When Trump took office in 2017, the Churchill bust returned to the Oval Office. Four years later, President Biden (or whoever was making such decisions for him) conspicuously removed the Churchill bust from the Oval Office. Biden’s handlers frequently had him seated for photographs and news events in the Oval Office next to a bust of Robert F. Kennedy.
There was a time when leading Democrats revered Churchill. President John F. Kennedy made Churchill an honorary U.S. citizen. Churchill’s accomplishments dwarfed anything done by Bobby Kennedy, who was named attorney general at the insistence of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, who wanted Bobby there to protect the president from his own foibles.
The old man knew all about Jack’s reckless proclivities (womanizing and keeping company with the mob) because he shared them — they seem to have been part of the Kennedy DNA. And back when Joe was FDR’s ambassador to the Court of St. James, he repeatedly badmouthed Churchill while recommending the appeasement of Hitler. (RELATED: Churchill’s Citadel: His ‘Wilderness Years’ Headquarters)
When appeasement became a dir...