Donald Trump’s first eight weeks back in the White House have been a whirlwind but the president has still found time for one of his passions: interior decoration.
Not content with firing out executive orders, raising and lowering tariffs and unnerving the stock markets and America’s allies alike, the president has been busy redesigning the Oval Office, ensuring its furnishings, fixtures and ornaments are more in-keeping with his personal taste.
And for Trump, that means gold. And plenty of it.
“Even the remote control for the television down the hall is wrapped in gilt,” it adds.
The motif continues throughout the room, with Trump seemingly unable to pass a simple side table without pointing a finger at it like King Midas and ordering it lined with gilded eagles.
There are gold-framed medallions decorating the fireplace and even a replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy, a nod to the U.S. co-hosting the tournament next summer.
What some might be tempted to call clutter is also a recurrent theme, with most shelves and surfaces now crowded with statues, framed photographs, memorabilia and knick-knacks.
Trump has also tripled the number of pictures of his predecessors on the walls, adding portraits of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan, amongst others.
He has further reinstated his signature Diet Coke button on the Resolute Desk and a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from his first term, which is visible in a video posted to X by his assistant Dan Scavino, who routinely documents his boss’s changes on social media.
Once a solemn setting from which a commander-in-chief might consider the problems of the world, the Oval now looks much more like Trump’s glitzy Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, or Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, home to the famous golden escalator he descended with his wife Melania in June 2015 to announce his first run for the presidency.
Trump has not finished rethinking the White House and reportedly has plans to revamp the Rose Garden with a patio-style seating area akin to a similar space at Mar-a-Lago.
He has also talked about building a new ballroom on the property’s South Lawn inspired by the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
“They’ve always wanted a ballroom, you know, they only have the East Room, which is really very small.”
All of which stands in stark contrast to how the office looked when Joe Biden was in residence and just six portraits adorned the walls.
During Barack Obama’s tenure, there were even fewer former presidents staring down – just one each of Washington and Lincoln, in fact – with the rest of the space given over to more modern works by American painters like Edward Hopper on loan from the Whitney Museum.
