UK Edition
Winston Churchill bust set for Oval Office return by Donald Trump
Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he intends to rip up Barack Obama's legacy when he takes office - ending the Trans-Pacific Partnership, redrawing Obamacare and loading up Guantanamo with "some bad dudes".
However, one expected action is likely to be less controversial, certainly in Britain: that of restoring the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office.
Mr Trump, who has frequently professed his admiration for Britain's wartime leader, was asked earlier this week whether he was considering returning the bust, sculpted by Jacob Epstein, to the White House.
“I am, indeed, I am,” he said, during an interview at the New York Times, at which he was sitting in front of a picture of Churchill.
Mr Obama replaced the Churchill bust with one of Martin Luther King in the Oval Office in 2009, soon after he took over the presidency, causing outrage on both sides of the Atlantic.
Boris Johnson controversially wrote earlier this year, while he was Mayor of London, that Mr Obama's decision to send the bust back to the British embassy in Washington had been a “snub to Britain”.
Mr Johnson, who is now Foreign Secretary, suggested it might have been linked to Mr Obama's "ancestral dislike of the British Empire”.
However, Mr Obama later explained that he had a second sculpture of Churchill, who had an American mother and was the only person ever granted an honourary US passport, in his private quarters.
“My private office is called the Treaty Room. Right outside the door of the Treaty Room so that I see it every day, including on weekends when I’m going into that office to watch a basketball game, the primary image I see is a bust of Winston Churchill,” he said.
“It’s there voluntarily ‘cause I can do anything on the second floor. I love Winston Churchill, I love the guy."
The Epstein sculpture had been given to President George W Bush by Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, and was displayed in the Oval Office from 2001-2009.
Nigel Farage used an hour-long meeting with Mr Trump last week to persuade him to return the Churchill bust to the Oval Office.
Mr Farage said that Mr Trump, an Anglophile, was “excited” by the idea and was “very positive” about returning the bust to the Oval Office.
Mr Trump has called for Britain to install Mr Farage as ambassador to the US.