No one expected the (one-sided) bromance that took place when New York’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani visited President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. on November 21. For months, the two had traded insults online: Trump had called Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic” and Mamdani has repeatedly labeled the President a “despot.”

Face-to-face in the White House, however, the two found quite a lot they agreed upon. Reducing New York’s crime rate, for starters, as well as the spiraling cost of rent and the need to build affordable housing. Another point of agreement: the greatness of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The mutual admiration was captured with the two posing in front of a portrait of the 32nd president, Trump offering his characteristic thumbs up and beaming grin and Mamdani appearing mellow and distant.

Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani posing with Frank O. Salisbury’s portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Photo: @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.

For Mamdani, the appeal of Roosevelt is obvious. His New Deal created a legacy of social democratic policies in America, showing how the Federal government could intervene to radically improve the lives of ordinary citizens. For Trump, the attraction is less clear. Perhaps it’s simply the association with a president revered for passing a broad and ambitious agenda, or the fact that Roosevelt enjoyed an unprecedented four terms.

Before the press in the Oval Office, Mamdani talked about the inspiration of the Roosevelt presidency: “When the federal government and New York City government work together to deliver on affordability, it can be transformative.” Trump, by contrast, talked about himself: “We have a great portrait of FDR that I found in the vaults. It was missing for years. I found it and I put it up.”

Though the mental image of Trump rummaging around the White House archives with a flashlight in search of a lost portrait of Roosevelt is amusing, it’s untrue. Most straightforwardly because his predecessor, Joseph Biden, chose to hang the same painting in the Oval Office, a somewhat telling choice given the numerous comparisons between the two presidents.

President Joe Biden sits underneath a portrait of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office at the White House, 2021. Photo: Doug Mills-Pool / Getty Images.

The White House version is a copy of a 1935 painting by Frank O. Salisbury, the English born portraitist who found remarkable success in the U.S. painting its rich and powerful. He orbited around Chicago and New York painting the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Pierpont Morgan, John Davison Rockefeller, and Andrew William Mellon.

The portrait offers Roosevelt as resolute and deep in thought, surrounded by the instruments of his office. His fist on the desk is clenched. Painted midway through Roosevelt’s first term, his composed demeanor belies the fact the painting sessions that took place in the White House were constantly interrupted by the day’s business.

Franklin D. Roosevelt portrait at the White House during the Harry S. Truman administration, 1947. Photo: Abbie Rowe / National Park Service. Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

The painting was commissioned (along with a portrait of President Herbert Hoover) for the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; Salisbury would go on to make five copies of the painting. The version currently hanging in the White House was painted by Salisbury in 1947 after President Harry S. Truman asked for an official White House portrait of Roosevelt to be made.