It’s not the most important tradition Trump has exploded but it’s a telling one:
It’s been a White House tradition for decades: A first-term president hosts a ceremony in the East Room for the unveiling of the official portrait of his immediate predecessor that will hang in the halls of the White House for posterity.
Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa — even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.
“We may have our differences politically,” President Barack Obama said when he hosted former President George W. Bush for his portrait unveiling in 2012, “but the presidency transcends those differences.”
Yet this modern ritual won’t be taking place between Obama and President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. And if Trump wins a second term in November, it could be 2025 before Obama returns to the White House to see his portrait displayed among every U.S. president from George Washington to Bush.
Trump is unconcerned about shunning yet another presidential custom, and he has attacked Obama to an extent no other president has done to a predecessor. Most recently he’s made unfounded accusations that Obama committed an unspecified crime.
Obama, for his part, has no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage so long as Trump is in office, the people familiar with the matter said.
If he is defeated and actually leaves the White House, which is not guaranteed, I wonder if this tradition will be upheld? Frankly, I don’t think it should be but I imagine that a Biden administration will try to do it to “heal the nation’s wounds.”
If they only use these superficial traditions to try to do it, that’s fine. If they decide to do something more substantial, like refusing to “look in the rearview mirror” it’s going to be a huge problem. Trump is destroying the world and there must be a reckoning.