President Donald Trump announced Wednesday the removal of the historic Resolute Desk from the Oval Office — at least temporarily.
Trump had the desk taken for refinishing, replacing it with the C&O desk previously used by President George H.W. Bush.
“This desk, the ‘C&O,’ which is also very well-known and was used by President George H.W. Bush and others, has been temporarily installed in the White House while the Resolute Desk is being lightly refinished—a very important job,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “This is a beautiful, but temporary replacement!”
The Resolute Desk, crafted from the salvaged wood of the HMS Resolute, a British Navy ship abandoned during an 1854 Arctic expedition, was gifted to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy later discovered and restored the desk before moving it to President John F. Kennedy’s office.
“A President, after election, gets a choice of 1 in 7 desks,” Trump noted, though historical records show only six desks have been used in the Oval Office since its 1909 construction: the Theodore Roosevelt, Hoover, Resolute, Johnson, Wilson, and C&O desks.
The Resolute Desk has remained a fixture in the Oval Office since 1977 when President Jimmy Carter returned it from the Smithsonian, where it had been displayed between 1966 and 1977.
Every president since Carter has used it except George H.W. Bush, who chose the C&O desk, making it the shortest-serving desk in Oval Office history.
The C&O desk, named for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and donated to the White House by GSX corporation in 1987, has previously served in the West Wing Study under Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan.
The desk change comes amid a series of administrative actions in Trump’s second term, including new immigration policies and ongoing peace negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over the Ukraine conflict, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Saudi Arabia.
Only three presidents have never used the Resolute Desk in the West Wing: Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, according to the White House Historical Association. The desk was most recently used by Presidents Joe Biden (2021-2025), Barack Obama (2009-2017), and during Trump’s first term (2017-2021).