President Donald Trump has voiced his disapproval of a portrait of himself hanging in the Colorado State Capitol building. On Truth Social, he criticized both the artist and Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis, calling the painting ''purposefully distorted.'' Trump also claimed that residents of Colorado were contacting officials to express their dissatisfaction with the image. However, the painting was actually funded and organized by a top Republican leader, Kevin Grantham, not the governor. Grantham crowdfunded the portrait’s cost through GoFundMe and spoke in support of the artwork during its unveiling in 2019, emphasizing freedom of expression in America. Interestingly, during Trump’s first two years in office, there was no official portrait of him in the building. At one point in 2018, a prankster replaced the space with a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has now publicly called on Governor Polis to be ashamed, although the governor had no involvement in the portrait's creation.
Vocabulary:
• complain (verb): to say you are unhappy or not satisfied with something
• portrait (noun): a painting or photo of a person
• capitol (noun): a government building where laws are made
• slam (verb): to strongly criticize something or someone
• distorted (adj): changed in a way that is wrong or unclear
• claim (verb): to say something is true, even without proof
• crowdfund (verb): to raise money from many people online
• prankster (noun): a person who plays tricks on others
• ashamed (adj): feeling bad because of something wrong or embarrassing
• unveiling (noun): an event where something is shown for the first time
• response (noun): an answer or reply to something
• right (noun): something a person is allowed to do by law
• purposefully (adv): done with intention, not by accident
• politician (noun): someone who works in politics or government
Source: 9NEWS