Newsmax host Rob Finnerty on Friday morning scoffed at the notion of President Joe Biden placing a bust of civil-rights hero Rosa Parks in the Oval Office, derisively referring to the move as part of his “administration of identity politics.”
Among the many things right-wing media has found itself outraged over in the first days of the Biden administration has been the new president’s decision to remove the bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.
Former President Donald Trump made a big show of placing the bust behind his desk four years ago, especially given the amount of backlash his predecessor Barack Obama received from conservatives for not displaying the small statue in his Oval Office. Besides removing the Churchill bust, Biden has also added busts of Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and Latino labor and civil-rights activist César Chávez.
ADVERTISEMENT
During Friday’s broadcast of Newsmax morning show Wake Up America, Finnerty and his co-host Rachel Rollar groused about the new president’s White House redesign, framing it—of course—as Biden trying to erase “our heritage.”
Finnerty first noted that Biden apparently got rid of a painting of President Andrew Jackson, adding that “President Trump liked the Andrew Jackson stuff because Andrew Jackson was a populist outsider who became president.”
At the same time, while admitting Jackson had a “bad legacy with the Trail of Tears,” he criticized the “left-leaning media” for saying the seventh U.S. commander-in-chief was a “terrible, terrible president.” The Newsmax anchor huffed, “And it’s just he—it was because he was a populist, an outsider. Like Donald J. Trump.”
Roller did acknowledge that the Biden administration is “allowed to re-design the room however they want,” before saying it is “always interesting” to see what new presidents change.
“We now have a bust of Rosa Parks in the Oval Office as well,” she stated.
“Yeah, well, it’s the administration of identity politics starting their second full day today,” Finnerty scoffed. “So it’s—we expected this but the criticism will not stop for the next four years of our previous president.”
