A presidential portrait with Donald Trump’s approval now hangs in the Colorado Capitol after his complaints got a previous one of him taken down.
The new portrait by Tempe, Arizona, artist Vanessa Horabuena is a sterner, crisper image than Sarah Boardman’s painting of Trump that had hung since 2019.
Last spring, Trump posted on social media that Boardman “must have lost her talent as she got older” and “purposely distorted” him, criticisms the Colorado Springs artist denied.
Someone else got it right before me: he doesn’t like the standard “stately” pose in the first one. It makes him look too friendly and weak.
He likes the forward hunch and disdainful glare. It’s sinister. He likes being perceived that way. Many egomaniacal dictators liked being perceived that way.
Even Hitler in that photo doesn’t look nearly as sinister as Trump in his new portrait.
Specifically, it’s fairly obviously patterned after Mussolini, who was ALWAYS portrayed this way and is one of Trump’s “inspirations”.