Donald Trump has a new Andy Thomas painting hanging in his office that proves he’s “one of the boys.”
Eagle-eyed viewers of Trump’s 60 Minute interview noticed an interesting painting of Trump seated at a table among some of the most notable Republican presidents in history, including Abraham Lincoln.
In the piece he is seated across from Lincoln, between Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, with Teddy Roosevelt and Gerald Ford standing behind him. On the far left of the table is Ronald Reagan, with George W. Bush seated next to him and George H.W. Bush standing.
It’s actually an update from the hugely popular painting of Republican presidents by Andy Thomas, who told TIME that he struggled with how to fit Donald Trump in.
A self-taught cowboy painter in southwest Missouri, Thomas stressed that he’s no political expert, so he wasn’t quite sure how the 45th president would be received by his predecessors in an imagined meeting.
“He’s outside the norm of Republicans and that makes it kind of interesting,” he said. “Is he going to end up going in history as a great Republican or an abnormality or something? So it’s interesting. I just put him at the table, more or less the center of attention. We’ll let history decide. Or let the people decide. It’s not up to me.”
Thomas said Trump was a little hard to paint because his light hair, tan skin and lack of dark recesses under his eyes make his face mostly just “a light warm color.” He also found it hard to give Trump a “genuine smile,” and had to redo the painting after his first take seemed off.
Look closely.
The addition of a crowd in the background also led Thomas, an independent-minded Midwesterner who’s a fan of both Reagan and Bill Clinton, to add a subtle feminist message: A woman with indistinct features walking directly toward the table.
The same woman also appears in a separate painting, “The Democratic Club,” that Thomas just finished.
