Portrait of the President as an Old Ahole

In truth, it's not a great likeness. The artist got the mouth wrong, and it actually makes the subject more normal looking than he is IRL. It doesn't have the orange-tinged makeup, the white circles around they eyes where the subject was wearing eye protectors while on his tanning bed, the crazy comb-over hair pelt. 

So I don't blame him for not liking it. 

And, frankly, if he spent more time on petty matters like the portrait of himself that has hung in the Colorado state capitol building for six years now, maybe he would spend less time destroying democracy, violating due process, trashing the economy with his irrational stupidity (or is it stupid irrationality?), hiring incompetents, sucking up to autocrats, grifting with his meme coin, and shaking down law firms, universities, and corporations. 

Still, it's pretty horrifying that Trump is such a thin-skinned a-hole that he gives such a big damn about this particular portrait, let alone that he's petty and nasty enough to categorize it as "truly the worst" and imply that portraitist Sarah A. Boardman had "purposefully distorted" his image. Distorted it so that he actually looks like a more normal person than he does IRL? Or distorted in that it doesn't look like those fake MAGA renderings of Trump that show him idolized, fit, fierce.

The portrait has been there for six years now, but Trump just got wind of it, and decided to have a hissy fit over it, lashing out on social media. He claimed that the Democratic governor of Colorado deliberately put it up there to make him look bad. He said that many people from Colorado are very angry about it. (Sure many, but how many. Hmmm. Harris bested Trump in the state by more than 10%.)

And, of course, he had to attack the artist, to the extent that she believes he's hurting her business, and has issued her own statement:

“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering,” she wrote in the statement. (Source: NY Times)

Boardman, who is originally from England but who lives in Colorado, had more to say to defend her work:

“I completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion,’ political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied,” Ms. Boardman said. “I fulfilled the task per my contract.” 

She also did the Colorado portrait of President Obama, btw. It's not the best one I've ever seen, but it's okay. The best presidential portrait she's done, IMHO, is that of W. 

Anyway, the offending portrait has been taken down, with a spokesman for that Democratic making a pretty gracious statement:

“We are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience and hope all the attention successfully attracts even more tourists to the Denver area,” he said.

Trump isn't the first president to dislike a portrait of himself. The NYT article mentioned Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ. But, naturally, Trump had to go out of his way to belittle the artist as losing her talent as she's gotten older - for the record, she's in her early 60's - and accuse her of bias.

He is such a colossally petty ahole.