Winston Churchill Deserves Much Better from Today’s Republican Party
by Steve Rodriguez
Jan. 24, 2025, will mark the 60th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death. The famous British stateman is regarded as one of, if not the most famous and heroic individuals of the 20th Century. As Prime Minister, Churchill’s extraordinary oratory skills helped to inspire his country during World War II, while his wartime partnership with President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped guide the Allies to victory.
Though Churchill the person has long been gone from the world’s political stage, his influence continues to be felt in our country’s political contests. In recent years, Republicans have attempted to exploit his historical reputation to convey certain messages to the American voter.
However, during this year’s election campaign, that reputation has been employed by Republicans like an unwieldy tool capable of imposing self-inflicted political injury, or injury to Churchill’s reputation or, at the very least, head scratching bewilderment on the part of curious political observers.
Churchill last served as British Prime Minister in 1955. No matter, his legacy continues to haunt U.S. presidential politics. For example, in 2009, President Barak Obama was immediately criticized by Republican politicians for removing a Churchill bust from the White House. The bust, originally a gift from the British Embassy, had been kept in the Oval Office.
Republicans insisted Obama returned the bust to the British embassy, and that the decision reflected an anti-British attitude. However, it turns out the bust never left the White House grounds; it was merely moved to a spot outside the Treaty Room, which serves as the president’s private office.
That didn’t stop Republicans from expressing suspicions that Obama removed the bust out of an ancestral dislike of the imperialistic British Empire (Obama’s father was Kenyan and as everyone knows, certain Republicans like to say the words “Kenyan” and “Obama” in the same sentence as often as possible). The Republicans also viewed Churchill as a symbol of foreign policy toughness and determination. In doing so, they tried sending a message that the bust’s removal indicated Obama’s foreign policy would lack those essential attributes.
In the 2012 presidential race, Republican candidate Mitt Romney went out of his way to express his party’s preoccupation with Churchill. At a rally, Romney commented, “I’m looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill being in the Oval Office again.”
A second bust of Churchill was returned to the Oval Office when Trump became president. Republicans heartily praised the move, believing this signaled a return to a more traditional trans-Atlantic relationship. Trump was also thought to identify with the tough, bulldog-like Churchill visage (He did so even before the NYPD photographer snapped the infamous Trump mug shot.)
In January 2021, Biden took his turn to anger the Republicans as he once again removed the Churchill bust from the Oval Office. This time the Republicans didn’t make too much of a fuss. Biden ended up replacing the bust with those of Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Robert Kennedy.
Bust or no bust, the fate of Churchill’s influence in American politics has taken a bewildering turn in the past few weeks. On a recent podcast, former Fox News personality and current Trump supporter Tucker Carlson hosted self-purported historian Daryl Cooper (also a Holocaust denier), who claimed in the two-hour interview that Churchill was the “chief villain of the Second World War” because he escalated the conflict by declaring war on Germany after its invasion of Poland. He incredulously portrayed Hitler as a victim of Churchill’s hunger for war. Curiously, Carlson — a MAGA Republican darling — served to give credibility to Cooper’s wild claims, describing him as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
Based on the Republican Party’s past admiration for Churchill, one might have expected a vociferous response to such idiotic heresy. However, Trump supporters were not that excited about the issue. Elon Musk commented on his social media outlet X (formerly Twitter) that the interview was “Very interesting. Worth watching” before eventually deleting the message. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, dismissed the interview, saying he did not share the views of Cooper, but also did not “believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture.” Shortly thereafter Vance conducted his own interview with Carlson as if nothing had happened.
In light of the sudden Republican acceptance of anti-Churchill rhetoric, I ask the following: What happened to the Republican Party chapter of the Churchill Appreciation Society? Is he no longer representative of bulldog toughness and determination? Is Churchill now considered a BINO (Bulldog in Name Only)? Do international leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orbán more accurately typify the leadership brand now appreciated by Republicans?
Will Putin and Orbán busts soon be headed to the Oval House? If so, I am sure the Chavez, Parks, and King busts will disappear, but will Trump keep the Kennedy one out of loyalty to RFK Jr., or will he worm his way out of such a possibility? I can’t imagine a scenario in which busts of Putin, Orbán, and RFK are displayed in the same room, but that just goes to show how unusual politics has become these days.
As a student of history and an admirer of Churchill, I hope Republicans don’t play a part in besmirching his legacy. Churchill’s wartime leadership was truly inspirational, and the speeches he delivered in the darkest days of 1940 rank in eloquence somewhere between biblical and Shakespearean. He was anything but a villain. I merely wish his image not be so easily exploited for U.S. partisan purposes.
Yes, comments made by Trump last week can, in part, be construed as pro-Churchill. In an Indiana campaign speech, Trump admitted Churchill was “this great speaker.” Unfortunately, he then pathetically whined “I get much bigger crowds than him, but nobody ever says I’m a great speaker.”
Come to think of it, perhaps the Republican Party should enforce a self-imposed moratorium on further Churchill references, at least until after the election. Their understanding of Churchill is now all over the map.
President John F. Kennedy once famously said of Churchill, “He mobilized the English language and sent it off to war.” It appears the Republican party, on the other hand, initially set out to mobilize the Churchill legacy for partisan purposes, but reduced it at best to an instrument for measuring distorted crowd size. Churchill, the son of a British aristocrat and an American mother, deserves much better.
Steve Rodriguez is a retired Marine Corps officer and high school teacher who last taught at Olympian High School in Chula Vista. This article originally ran on The Times of San Diego which, along with The Moderate Voice, is a member of the San Diego Online News Association. Photo: By Yousuf Karsh – Flickr: Sir Winston Churchill, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41991931
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