The president is the latest occupant of the White House to sit at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
This famous desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the Arctic exploration ship the HMS Resolute. The desk gained further notoriety when President Harry Truman made it the location for his famous sign: "The Buck Stops Here!"
Friday, President Trump, in answering a question from an NPR reporter offered a different standard from the Truman credo. When asked if he took responsibility for the delay in making coronavirus testing kits available more quickly, he responded: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Answering another reporter’s question on his responsibility for dismantling the pandemic office of the National Security Council in the White House, again he refused responsibility and called it a “nasty question.”
Lew Baker, Salt Lake City