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(1) Josh Dawsey, Vera Bergengruen and Alexander Ward, The Painting That Explains Trump's Foreign Policy. James K Polk expanded the US more than any other president. Now his portrait hangs in the Oval Office as a sign of President Trump's ambitions. Wall Street Journal, Mar 15, 2025, at page C5 (every Saturday, section C is Review).
https://www.wsj.com/politics/the ... ign-policy-c387323a
Excerpt in the window of print: 'He got a lot of land,' Trump said to White House visitors about the Polk painting.
Note:
(a) I did not really read this article. View photos and learn what President Polk did is enough.
(b) caption of two photos the article carries states: The portrait of James K Polk now hangs in the Oval Office, where it can be seen in a Mar 12 photo.
(i)
(A) The portrait at issue is
James Knox Polk. In History, Art & Archives. US House of Representatives, undated (portrait; ACCESSION NUMBER 2005.016.013)
https://history.house.gov/Collection/Detail/29662
("ARTIST Rebecca Polk (after GPA Healy) * * * Object Details A distant cousin of James K Polk, Rebecca Polk spent most of her life in France. Her other artistic work is unknown. * * * ")
(B) James K Polk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk
(1795 – June 15, 1849; president 1845 – 1849; a portrait on the left margin with caption: "Oil on canvas portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy [1846.]" If you click the painter's name, you will learn that he painted another portrait of Polk in 1858 (after Polk's death). It is hard to tell on which of the two Rebecca Polk was based.
(ii) The Mar 12, 2025 photo was taken when Prime Minister Micheál Martin of Ireland paid a visit to Oval Office. (The en.wikipedia.org for Michael (table) lists Micheál as variant of Michael.)
-------------------WSJ
President Trump called Speaker Mike Johnson with a proposed deal last month: I’ll give you one of the White House’s portraits of Thomas Jefferson if you give me the one of James Polk hanging in the U.S. Capitol.
Johnson agreed, and a painting of the 11th president, who oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. territory in history, was moved across Washington and now hangs in the Oval Office, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump told others in the White House that he admired Polk, a champion of “manifest destiny” who through annexation and war acquired the Oregon Territory, Texas, California and much of the American Southwest. “He got a lot of land,” Trump said to White House visitors soon after the painting—featuring a steely-eyed Polk against a dark red background—was hung in late February.
One of the most striking features of Trump’s second term has been his thirst for expanding American territory. Since taking office, he has said that Canada is fleecing Americans on trade and should be made the 51st state; that the U.S. should retake control of the Panama Canal to ward off Chinese influence; and that the war in Gaza should be ended by the U.S. taking over the territory and rebuilding it. Trump has also talked about acquiring Greenland from Denmark.
The actual inhabitants of all these places have loudly rejected Trump’s claims, but he has persisted in making them, even as they threaten to derail other American priorities on trade and security. Expanding U.S. territory is part of the vision of a new “Golden Age” Trump has promised for his second term, which he says will restore American dominance abroad and usher in a new period of prosperity at home.
The predecessor who now inspires Trump in vivid oil paint served only one term, dying shortly after he left office in 1849. But in four years Polk nearly doubled the territory of the U.S. On the northern border, Polk’s supporters rallied around the expansionist slogan “54°40’ or Fight,” demanding the U.S. take over the entire Pacific Northwest up to that latitude, then the southern boundary of Russian Alaska, even if it meant going to war with Britain. Instead, in 1846 Polk negotiated a treaty that established the U.S.’s northern border at the 49th parallel.
In the Southwest, Polk annexed Texas and fought the Mexican-American War, which ended in Mexico ceding more than 500,000 square miles to the U.S., including all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, in exchange for $15 million.
It was “one of the largest land grabs in world history,” said historian Hampton Sides, who wrote about Polk in his book “Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West.” “He wanted it all, and he got it all in one term, which was kind of extraordinary if you think about it.”
In terms of personality, Polk and Trump have little in common, Sides said. Despite his aggressive foreign policy, Polk “was not this blustering, loud, bully of a person. He was morose, a kind of dark guy.” Polk was also known “for being quite honest…He wasn’t this erratic, crazy person who was constantly throwing people off guard. He was almost predictable in his actions.”
Trump began his second term invoking similar rhetoric, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and vowing to “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.” In his address to Congress last week, he recalled earlier generations of Americans of who “carved their fortunes from the rock and soil of a perilous and very dangerous frontier.”
And Trump generated some support among his “America First” base for ideas that would have once seemed preposterous. The President’s fundraising website now sells $35 “Make Greenland Great Again” T-shirts, and Etsy stores are promoting fan art of Trump battling a polar bear over a “For Sale” sign. At inaugural events in Washington, D.C. in January, Trump-supporting attendees sported “Maple Syrup MAGA” and “Make Canada Great Again” gear.
Some of Trump’s allies in Congress have also eagerly rallied behind these proposals, introducing legislation with names like the “Make Greenland Great Again Act,” which aims to authorize the U.S. government to acquire Greenland, and the “Red, White, and Blueland Act,” which seeks to rename Greenland and facilitate its acquisition.
Other Republicans have privately derided Trump’s expansionist ambitions. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, told him that if Canada were a state it would likely elect Democratic senators. But Trump remains serious about growing the country during his time in the White House. He views it as a part of his legacy, five people who have spoken to him say.
“President Trump is unafraid to propose new, bold ideas in his effort to put America first, and everything he says is true—Greenland is superbly strategically located in the Arctic; the Panama Canal should no longer be run by the Chinese Communist Party; and Canada has been ripping off American farmers and workers for decades. Where’s the lie?” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
Negative reactions have only emboldened Trump. He has kept his eyes on the Gaza Strip partially because so many people have mocked the idea, one person close to him said. In recent weeks he has also bragged that he forced Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau to resign, and White House officials say he plans to keep mockingly referring to the country as a state.
The Canadians, who first dismissed Trump’s talk of annexation as a joke or a negotiating tactic, have come to see it as a serious threat. Canadian officials have discussed with Trump advisers what they can do to get him to stop talking about it.
Other foreign leaders have similarly struggled to find an effective response. A person familiar with Panama’s strategy said the country is trying to appease the president “at all costs” while keeping Panamanian sovereignty over the canal. In response to Trump’s complaints about Chinese influence, Panama announced it would not renew an infrastructure deal with China and that a U.S. firm would take control of two major ports on the canal after acquiring them from a Hong Kong-based company. Trump White House officials are pleased with the concessions, but Trump still wants the canal returned to the U.S., the person said.
Trump has also threatened Denmark with tariffs if it doesn’t agree to sell Greenland to the U.S., prompting the country to look for a Washington lobbyist, people familiar with the matter said. Denmark has quietly proposed allowing more U.S. forces on the island and granting favorable mining contracts to American firms.
Trump administration officials said they are open to those ideas, but noted that the president is serious about wanting Greenland and refuses to rule out military options to acquire it. Discussions are ongoing in the White House about how to secure Greenland, a senior administration official said. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump told a joint session of Congress last week.
That determination makes it natural for Trump to admire Polk, said historian John Pinheiro, director of research at the conservative Acton Institute. “Polk had a vision of a bicoastal nation with commerce with Europe on one coast and Asia on the other,” Pinheiro said. “If [Trump] and Polk have anything in common…it’s looking next door.”
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