Trump quietly adds controversial statues to White House Rose Garden: Here's everything to know

President Donald Trump has quietly installed a life-sized bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson in the White House Rose Garden, marking new additions to his ongoing makeover of the presidential grounds.

The statue was created almost 25 years ago by sculptor George Lundeen and showcases the nation’s third president working on a draft of the Declaration of Independence. Around late June, the statue arrived at the White House and was held for security examination before being erected last week.

Also created by Lundeen, at 77 years old, was the 7-foot-tall, 700-pound bronze statue called "fight fight fight," depicting Trump's raised fist after he survived an assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024. As reported by The Washington Post, Trump called to express gratitude to the artist, stating, “The sculpture looks really beautiful.”

The latest statue is the fifth addition to Trump’s redesigned Rose Garden, where he already replaced the central grass lawns with a stone patio. Existing statues are of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and a Revolutionary War sculpture called “Freedom’s Charge.”

Among these, three, including Franklin, Hamilton, and Freedom’s Charge, are borrowed from Harlan Crow, a conservative megadonor and collector known for showering Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with gifts.

White House cited the donors as “generous private American patriots.”

However, Trump's project is not limited to the White House. For example, he arranged for an open-air exhibit of statues in downtown Washington featuring a statue of Caesar Rodney, who signed the Declaration of Independence but whose statue was taken away in 2020 in Delaware because of his past involvement in slavery. In March, Trump also erected a copy of the Christopher Columbus statue toppled in Baltimore in 2020.

With these new White House makeovers, critics have drawn comparisons to authoritarian regimes. Maxwell Anderson, former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. Trump has also reportedly expressed sympathy for figures like Columbus, who became flashpoints due to their roles in colonisation and enslavement. Till now, White House has not issued any statement regarding the new statue.