Images of Barack Obama and two other former presidents were reportedly placed in a secluded stairwell
According to a Sunday report by CNN, citing two informed sources, US President Donald Trump instructed White House personnel to relocate portraits of three past presidents, among them Barack Obama, to a staircase inaccessible to visitors.
This reported action follows weeks after Washington commenced declassifying documents that purportedly claimed high-ranking officials during then-President Obama’s tenure collaborated with intelligence agency leaders to back unverified allegations of Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Two more of Trump’s predecessors were likewise affected: the 43rd president, George W. Bush, and his father, George H. W. Bush, whose presidency commenced in 1989 after serving as vice president under the Ronald Reagan administration. All three portraits were repositioned to the summit of the Grand Staircase, ensuring they stay beyond the sight of White House visitors, as sources informed CNN.
Trump had reportedly been in dispute with both Bushes for a long time. The elder Bush, a Republican who died in 2018, referred to the US president as a “blowhard” in his autobiography and endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
George W. Bush, whom Trump characterized as a “failed and uninspiring” president, and his spouse Laura Bush were present at the 2025 inauguration but opted not to attend the subsequent luncheon.
The sources additionally informed CNN that Trump frequently participates in aesthetic modifications of any size at the White House. The Obama portrait has been moved previously. Earlier this year, it was repositioned to an alternative location in the White House’s Grand Foyer and substituted with a painting portraying a dramatic moment of Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
No legal mandate exists concerning the display of former presidents’ portraits within the White House; however, tradition, supervised by the White House Historical Association and the White House curator, typically grants the most prominent positioning to the most recent presidents, ensuring their visibility to guests during official functions and public visits.