The Rose Garden is no longer a garden, but it does now have five statues of various historical figures. As part of Donald Trump’s quest to “beautify” the White House, over the past year he’s added statues of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Revolutionary War soldiers, and, most recently, Thomas Jefferson.
The latest addition, a statue of Jefferson with a draft of the Declaration of Independence in hand, was sculpted by Jeff Lundeen. Last year, he sculpted Trump himself, holding a MAGA hat and raising his fist in an allusion to the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The statue is titled “Donald Trump, Defiance.” It currently sits at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, courtesy of Sticker Mule CEO and current congressional candidate Anthony Constantino.
Three of the statues—depicting Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and two Revolutionary War soldiers—are on loan to the White House courtesy of billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, according to reporting by the Washington Post. Crow, who chairs the multi-billion-dollar real estate firm Crow Holdings, has an extensive art and artifacts collection that includes Nazi memorabilia (complete with a signed copy of Mein Kampf), documents signed by Christopher Columbus, and a backyard filled with statues of dictators that he calls “The Garden of Evil.” He says he keeps these artifacts because he hates communism and facism.
Crow is also the very same billionaire Republican megadonor who treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to luxury vacations and trips on yachts. Crow has often expressed his distaste for Trump, saying in 2023 that he was self-diagnosing with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and throwing a swanky fundraiser for primary opponent Nikki Haley. It is unclear if he has now changed his tune.
Trump seems to have a thing for statues—he recently oversaw the installation of 13 Revolutionary War statues in Freedom Plaza, including one of soldier Caesar Rodney that was previously removed by the city of Wilmington, Delaware, in 2020 because of Rodney’s ownership of hundreds of enslaved people. In March, a replica of a Christopher Columbus statue removed from Baltimore was installed outside the Eisenhower Building next to the White House. Trump’s also been pushing for a “National Garden of American Heroes” since 2020, which would feature 250 statues of historical figures, including George Washington, Annie Oakley, and (Canadian) Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek.
The addition of statues to the Rose Garden has been a gradual process. Last year, Trump installed the first statue, a sculpture of George Washington originally displayed at the Washington Monument. In March of this year, the statues of Hamilton and Franklin officially moved into the Rose Garden on loan from Crow. Both were originally at Old Parkland, a business campus in Dallas owned by Crow Holdings featuring a neoclassical design and statues of Founding Fathers.
Another recent addition to the Rose Garden is “Freedom’s Charge,” a statue of two Revolutionary War soldiers. The statue is on loan from Crow and was designed by Chas Fagan, who Trump appointed to the Commission of Fine Arts during his first term. Fagan also painted Trump in 2016 as part of his series painting every president for C-SPAN’s “American Presidents Life Portraits” exhibit.
A Trump official told USA Today this morning that because the statue of Jefferson is a gift, unlike the other statues which are all on loan, the National Archives may transfer the statue to Trump’s presidential library at the end of his term. The Trump library may also loan it back to the White House. The future of the other statues is a more unclear, and may well be dependent on how interested the next president is in continuing Trump’s “beautification” efforts.
