MAGA Republican President Donald Trump has made significant, controversial changes to the White House since he took up residence for his second term on January 20, 2025.
The renovations in just over one year include installing pavers to replace the grass in the Rose Garden, adding gold decor throughout the building and especially in the Oval Office, renovating the Lincoln bathroom to add marble and more gold fixtures, adding gold signs for White House features like it's one of Trump's resorts, hanging a plethora of massive portraits of himself in gaudy gold frames, and demolishing the entire East Wing of the building to erect a self-described monument to himself, an unpopular golden ballroom that will dwarf the rest of the building.
On Monday, Trump hosted an event honoring law enforcement officials—just not the ones his followers attacked at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. During his remarks, Trump jumped from non sequitur to non sequitur as he usually does, like when he attacked former Democratic President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris during Easter remarks to children.
Trump decided an event for law enforcement was the perfect time to justify why he was remaking the presidential residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the tacky, gold plated style Trump uses in his own homes.
Trump claimed:
"This place was not properly taken care of. I was told by my wife you have to act presidential, so don’t use foul language. I won’t, therefore—normally, I would have said it was a sh*t house, but I don’t want to say that."
You can see Trump's comments here:
Trump added:
"The columns were falling down. The plaster was falling off... This place is tippy top now. Including all the brand new beautiful stone—I paid for it myself—all of the stone, all of the different things we have, and we’re bringing the White House back to shape."
"I spent a lot of time on bringing this house back, because this house was in very bad shape."
But Trump didn't repair columns or plaster. Instead he added or replaced features to reflect his idea of style.
Then Trump touted his vanity project ballroom that he claimed for months would be privately funded.
Now he's asking taxpayers to foot the $400 million-$1 billion ballroom bill, justifying the cost with a conveniently timed violent incident in an area adjacent to where Trump was.
The POTUS declared:
“And the big thing is, we’re building a ballroom in the back, which will be, I think, the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. You’ll never see anything like it."
"And it will also be very safe. It’s going to be a very safe ballroom. It’s got glass this thick, it’s amazing, the glass is this thick, like six inches thick, and you look through it, and you can see as perfectly as though it weren’t there."
"Now, how they do that, I don’t know, but it’s at the highest level of safety, and you won’t have a situation like you had two weeks ago on Saturday night [in the lobby of the hotel where Trump was attending his first ever White House Correspondents' Dinner as President]."
People reacted viscerally to Trump's latest declaration of why the White House needs to look like a casino from the 1980s.
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Trump's personal style has long been considered tacky, a cheap imitation of European palaces, that Trump thinks will denote a level of class and refinement.
In his mind, slathering everything in gold makes him classy instead of a pathetic wannabe royal.
Based on an analysis of public comments conducted by the New York Times, 98% were negative regarding Trump's changes with words like "gaudy," "cheap," and "appalling" being used, with many focused on Trump's taste level.
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