In Joe Biden's office, a bust of Rosa Parks and the moon rock
New US President Joe Biden has made several decorative adjustments in the Oval Office.
AP - Alex Brandon
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Like his predecessors, just installed in the White House, US President Joe Biden changed the decoration of the Oval Office.
The Washington Post was given a guided tour.
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Joe Biden did not break with tradition.
Like his predecessors when they arrived at the White House, the new American president has had the decoration of the Oval Office changed to set the tone of his mandate.
The presidential office is now organized around a large portrait of Franklin Roosevelt.
A president who, recalls
the
Washington Post
journalist
, helped the United States through major crises.
The portrait of another president, Thomas Jefferson, hung next to Alexander Hamilton, a former Treasury secretary with whom he often disagreed.
For Joe Biden's team, it is thus a question of "
showing how the differences of opinion, expressed within the framework of the Republic, are essential to democracy
".
Several busts of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy, recall the importance for the president of the struggle for civil rights.
Joe Biden also had a portrait added by Donald Trump: that of Andrew Jackson.
A president also populist, and signatory in 1830 of an Indian law which had resulted in the death of thousands of them.
Finally Joe Biden had a portrait of the inventor and abolitionist Benjamin Franklin added, to show his interest in following the news of science.
Moreover, there is now also in the Oval Office a piece of rock brought back from the moon, to remind Americans, in these difficult times, of the ambition of the generations which preceded them, and of their successes.
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