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  • 2020-05-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Will the White House Portrait Ceremony Not Occur in 2020? (en)
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  • A decades old presidential tradition may hit the brakes in 2020 owing to a bitter divide between U.S. President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama. The presidential portrait ceremony usually takes place when a first-term president hosts his predecessor in the White House for an event in which they unveil the former president and first lady's portraits that will hang in the White House for posterity. According to NBC News, acrimony between the two men likely will result in no ceremony in 2020. Republican and Democrat presidents have jointly participated in this ceremony for decades, even when they criticized each other or had major political differences. This year, however, Trump accused Obama of an unspecified crime with no evidence, furthered old conspiracy theories against him, and blamed the handling of the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on the previous administration. Neither president seems to want to participate in an event with the other, according to NBC: Spokespeople for both Obama and the White House declined to comment on the above report. This is not the first time the portrait tradition has been in peril. President Jimmy Carter appears to have not attended a ceremony for his official portrait when Ronald Reagan was in office. According to CNN, Trump and Obama have met only once in person since Trump's Inauguration Day — at the funeral for former President George H.W. Bush in December 2018, when they shook hands briefly at the start of the service but didn't interact for the remainder of the day. Unclear is whether an official ceremony for Trump and Obama will take place sometime in the future, though it is unlikely to happen while Trump is in office. Given that, we rate this claim as Mostly true. (en)
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