{"id":22999,"date":"2025-03-24T19:26:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T01:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/portrait-of-donald-trump-that-he-called-distorted-is-removed-from-colorado-capitol\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:23:08","slug":"portrait-of-donald-trump-that-he-called-distorted-is-removed-from-colorado-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/portrait-of-donald-trump-that-he-called-distorted-is-removed-from-colorado-capitol\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of Donald Trump \u2013 that he called \u2018distorted\u2019 \u2013 is removed from Colorado Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A portrait of President Donald Trump hangs on a wall in the rotunda on the third floor of the Colorado Capitol on Monday in Denver. (Helen H. Richardson\/The Denver Post via AP)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A portrait of Donald Trump<\/a> that he said was \u201cpurposefully distorted\u201d was removed from a wall at the Colorado state Capitol where it had been since 2019.<\/p>\n

After Trump posted complaints about the painting on his Truth Social platform, Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Republican, asked that it be taken down and replaced with one that \u201cdepicts his contemporary likeness.\u201d Colorado Republicans had raised more than $10,000 to commission the oil painting.<\/p>\n

By Tuesday morning, the portrait was no longer hanging next to those of other U.S. presidents.<\/p>\n

Democrats in the Legislature did not object to the painting\u2019s removal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that\u2019s up to them,\u201d they said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"Christopher
Christopher Nicklin, center, with friends Brandon Kramer, left, and Clint Denison, right, take a photo of the portrait of President Donald Trump hanging in the rotunda on the third floor of the Colorado State Capitol on Monday in Denver. (Helen H. Richardson\/The Denver Post via AP)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"President
President Donald Trump's portrait hangs in the Colorado Capitol. (Thomas Peipert\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Republicans have not said how they will pay for a new portrait or who might paint it.<\/p>\n

In his post on social media on Sunday, Trump had said he would prefer no picture at all over the one at the Colorado Capitol. He praised the portrait of former President Barack Obama, which was painted by the same artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the state Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n

The presidential portraits are not the purview of the Colorado governor\u2019s office but the Colorado Building Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n

The ones up to and including President Jimmy Carter were donated as a collection. The others were donated by political parties or paid for by outside fundraising.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the first time the portrait of Trump has drawn attention. Before its installation, a prankster placed a picture<\/a> of Russian President Vladimir Putin near the spot intended for Trump.<\/p>\n

Some people initially objected to artist Sarah Boardman\u2019s depiction of Trump as \u201cnonconfrontational\u201d and \u201cthoughtful\u201d when they considered him just the opposite, according to an interview with Colorado Times Recorder<\/em><\/a> from the time. She told the newspaper that she wanted to create a likeness that was apolitical and would stand the test of time.<\/p>\n

\"A
A news crew works in front of a wall of presidential portraits at the Colorado Capitol on Monday in Denver. (Thomas Peipert\/Associated Press)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A portrait of President Donald Trump hangs on a wall in the rotunda on the third floor of the Colorado Capitol on Monday in Denver. (Helen H. Richardson\/The Denver Post via AP)dur-i-syn A portrait of Donald Trump that he said was \u201cpurposefully distorted\u201d was removed from a wall at the Colorado state Capitol where it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77937,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999\/revisions\/77937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22999"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}