Fact-Check: Did White House Lie on MLK Day Tweet Claiming Biden ‘Handpicked’ Bust?
President Joe Biden’s administration found itself under scrutiny on Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a White House tweet claimed that Biden had “handpicked” a bust of the civil rights leader for the Oval Office. However, a closer look reveals a factual misstep in the attempt to connect Biden to the symbolic gesture.
The social media post from the White House declared, “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s bust sits inside the Oval Office — handpicked by President Biden — as a reflection of President Biden’s promise to America: to restore the soul of America, to rebuild this country from the bottom up and the middle out, and to unite it.”
The assertion, however, faces a significant flaw. Contrary to the claim, Biden did not handpick the MLK bust for the Oval Office. As reported at the beginning of Biden’s term by the Washington Post, busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy flanked a fireplace in the Oval Office. The MLK bust first arrived during President Barack Obama’s tenure, and President Donald Trump retained it, albeit in a different area of the room.
Therefore, the claim that Biden personally selected the MLK bust is inaccurate. The only credit Biden can truthfully receive is deciding to relocate the bust after removing a Winston Churchill bust that had been displayed by the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.
This isn’t the first time the MLK bust has been at the center of misinformation. In 2017, a false narrative emerged, suggesting that Trump had removed the MLK bust after his inauguration, leading to a fact-checking debacle that discredited the claim.
The recent misstep adds to Biden’s history of factual inaccuracies and embellishments.
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