Did Trump Remove a MLK Bust from the Oval Office?

A Time magazine reporter erroneously tweeted that a bust of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. was removed from display in the Oval Office by Donald Trump.

David Emery

Published 21 January 2017

Claim

Donald Trump had a bust of Marin Luther King, Jr. removed from display in the Oval Office on his first day in the White House.

Rating

False

About this rating

Origin

Newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump and his staff began moving into the White House on 20 January 2017, trailed by reporters and photographers documenting Trump’s first day in office. One of those reporters, Zeke Miller of Time magazine, remarked upon entering the Oval Office that a Bush-era bust of Winston Churchill that had been replaced with one of Martin Luther King, Jr. by President Obama was once again on prominent display:

The Winston Churchill bust is back in the Oval Office

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

It appeared to Miller that the bust of MLK was now gone, an observation he also tweeted, though it proved to be erroneous. A short while after first mentioning the apparent bust exchange, Miller corrected himself:

Correction: The MLK bust is still in the Oval Office. It was obscured by an agent and door. — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

Tweeting again: wh aide confirms the MLK bust is still there. I looked for it in the oval 2x & didn’t see it. My apologies to my colleagues — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

Meanwhile, word had gotten around to incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the whereabouts of the MLK bust were in question. In response, he tweeted photographic proof that it was still there (please note, Spicer’s Twitter account was later taken over by his replacement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was later replaced by Stephanie Grisham):

Thanks to White House Chief of Staff for this wonderful picture of the MLK bust in the oval pic.twitter.com/Lzgj6RljvI — Sean Spicer (@PressSec) January 21, 2017

Spicer also cited Miller’s mistake as an example of the danger of not checking one’s facts:

A reminder of the media danger of tweet first check facts later https://t.co/dYqwRv1p0f — Sean Spicer (@PressSec) January 21, 2017

President Trump had the last word on the incident, citing it as an example of “media dishonesty” during a 21 January speech at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia:

So Zeke, from Time magazine, writes a story about, I took down — I would never do that, because I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is. Now, big story. The retraction was like, where?

For the record, the MLK bust dust-up never attained the status of a “big story” in the media. Zeke Miller corrected his error — via Twitter — within an hour of making it — via Twitter. There was never any published story to retract.