If you squint your eyes ever so slightly you might just mistake the presidential portraits and bronze-framed plaques as a serious historical display. Then you remember that this is Trump’s White House.
A new exhibit, called the “Presidential Walk of Fame,” featuring every U.S. president and a description, many of which were authored by President Trump, is now located near the Oval Office. The descriptions of a number of his predecessors, especially Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton are filled with inaccuracies and insults designed to cast Trump in the best possible light.
President Biden’s, whose portrait is replaced by the image of an autopen, is referred to as “Sleepy Joe” while Obama is called the “most divisive president in American history.” Trump inserts himself throughout the timeline. Andrew Jackson’s plaque says the seventh president was “unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously and unfairly as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future, be.”
It goes without saying that this is not history. In fact, it reduces presidential history to a Truth Social post.
I immediately thought of another historical plaque that Trump placed on one of his Virginia golf courses, located on Lowes Island, along the Potomac River, back in 2015.
The plaque reads: “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot…. The casualties were so great that the water turned red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’” No date is given on the marker as to when this engagement took place. No military units or commanding officers are identified because according to historians there is no evidence that anyone was killed at this particular spot during the Civil War.
Trump made it up.
You can’t travel for long in Virginia without coming across a Civil War battlefield. The state proved to be fertile ground for some of the largest and most costly battles, owing to the proximity of the Confederate capital in Richmond and Washington, D.C. Signs for real battlefields such as Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Manassas dot the major roads between the two cities.
To many Americans these hallowed landscapes deserve to be protected and properly interpreted as places of reflection and as a reminder of the price paid to preserve this union and abolish slavery. In Virginia, the National Park Service is largely responsible for this important work.
Don’t forget that on January 11, 2026 at 8PM EST, the Civil War Memory Book Club will be meeting to discuss Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families by Judith Giesberg.
This is one of my favorite history books of 2025. I hope you can join us, but please remember that the book group is open to PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. Upgrade now to join.
To Donald Trump, the Civil War, like history generally, is nothing more than a story that can be manipulated, even invented whole cloth, as part of a public relations campaign for his Trump National Golf Club.
When notified that historians did not believe that a single Civil War soldier had been killed on the site of his Virginia golf club, Trump responded, “How would they know that? Were they there?” Still, Trump insisted that historians were consulted, though he is unable to identify them.
Insisting that men died where they didn’t dishonors the memory of the hundreds of thousands whose sacrifice turned real streams and rivers red on countless battlefields just a stones throw away as well as the families and communities they left behind.
Trump could have placed a marker describing the significance of the Potomac River as a crossing site for the two armies or some of the local events of the Civil War that took place within only a few short miles of his golf course, such as the very real battle of Balls Bluff, which was fought on October 21, 1861. In doing so, Trump could have added a small reminder to a crowded landscape of historical markers across Virginia that asks communities and visitors to slow down for a few moments and reflect on larger issues and meanings.
What does Trump’s marker ask visitors to contemplate? You guessed it. Himself: “It is my great honor to have preserved this section of the Potomac River!” It deserves a chuckle or sneer, but Trump’s recklessness demonstrates that in his hands history serves nothing more than to advance his own financial and political goals and adds fuel to an already overflowing ego.
This is the very same individual who issued an Executive Order back in March calling for the ‘restoration of truth and sanity to American History’ and who spent 2025 accusing the staff of the National Park Service and Smithsonian Institution of intentionally distorting American history.
Take a second to read Trump’s description of his own presidency.
Trump’s childish and reckless attempt to control history and his legacy is built on wishful thinking and a narcissism that blinds him to the scale of the destruction of history that he is directly responsible for, beginning just a few steps away with the East Wing of the White House.
All of this will become central to his legacy and the history of this presidency.
It should come as no surprise that Trump’s description of his presidency makes no mention of his two impeachments or his role in instigating a violent mob on January 6, 2021 to overturn the certification of a free and fair presidential election. That’s just for starters.
I suspect that most people can identify the difference between a serious attempt to interpret the past and propaganda. This little “exhibit” does little more than cheapen the history of The White House and the institution of the presidency.
Most importantly, it’s an insult and embarrassment to the American people—past, present, and future.
