Daniel Brenner, Special to the Denver Post
President Donald Trump’s portrait hangs in the rotunda gallery of the Capitol in Denver on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019.
President Donald Trump took to social media Sunday night to complain about what he called a “distorted” portrait of himself hanging in the Colorado State Capitol’s Gallery of Presidents.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social.
The portrait, commissioned during Trump’s first term, was paid for with a Republican-led fundraising effort and approved by Colorado Republicans before it was put on display in 2019.
Former state Senate President Kevin Grantham, a Republican, raised nearly $11,000 in an online fundraiser for the portrait in the summer of 2018 after he learned no donations had been received to fund the painting more than a year into Trump’s first term.
The unveiling of the portrait on Aug. 1, 2019 — at an event hosted by the Colorado Senate Republicans and artist Sarah Boardman of Colorado Springs — was described as nonpartisan by organizers.
