Someone put Russian President Vladimir Putin’s portrait up in the Colorado state Capitol this week — in place of President Donald Trump’s.
See, a state arts group called Colorado Citizens for Culture is responsible for adorning the third-floor rotunda at the Capitol with portraits of every U.S. president. But there’s one “bigly” gap in the collection.
Nearly 19 months into his term in office, Colorado Citizens for Culture has yet to receive enough donations for a Trump portrait, Jay Seller, the organization’s president, told McClatchy. They cost about $10,000 a pop.
When news of the Putin portrait’s brief tenure in the Colorado hallway first broke, Seller told KUSA that not one donor in the state had stepped up to donate for Trump’s portrait.
“To date, $45 has come in for the portrait,” Seller told McClatchy. “That’s not nearly enough.”
He told ColoradoPolitics.com that during the terms of other recent U.S. presidents, securing the necessary funding for portraits took four to five months.
But in the absence of a Trumpian likeness, an unidentified prankster brought Putin to the presidential party instead, according to a tweet from a Colorado state senator. A Putin portrait briefly photobombed the 44 U.S. presidents in the hallway Thursday, and one of Steve Fenberg’s aides snapped a quick pic of the jarring visual.
The Democrat from Boulder even capped his tweet off with a #putinpotus hashtag.
A tour guide removed Putin’s portrait from the rotunda shortly after Fenberg tweeted the photo, KUSA reported.