Donald Trump gives White House a Mar-a-Lago makeover
Donald Trump has big plans to ‘restore glory’ and he is starting by paving over the White House lawn and blinging up the Oval Office.
The last time the Trumps were living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue it was Melania who left her mark on the greenest corner of the whitest house in America. In her sights was the Rose Garden, where a handful of crabapple trees had grown too big for their boots and were undemocratically casting shade on more sensitive plants.
Decades after they were installed under the watchful eye of Jackie Kennedy during the renovation of 1962, the trees that were also disliked by Nancy Reagan were quietly removed. Aside from a few new paths and flowerbeds being installed here and there, that was that. Except it wasn’t.
The Trumps are back and this time the lawn is bothering them. Or rather, bothering the leader of the free world.
“Are you paving over the grass here?” Laura Ingraham of Fox News asked during a West Wing walkabout this week as they encountered a group of landscape gardeners on their knees.
“We’re supposed to have events here,” Trump said as they watched. “Every event you have, it’s soaking wet. And the women with the high heels, it’s just too much … ”
In short, Trump concluded, the grass had to go and he is a man who revels in making tough decisions. “It just doesn’t work,” he said. “You know, we use it for press conferences and it doesn’t work because the people fall into the wet.”
First commissioned in 1913 by Ellen Wilson, the wife of Woodrow Wilson, the garden – located just outside the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room – was redesigned by Jackie Kennedy to make room for outdoor parties, as John F Kennedy and his wife brought a touch of glamour to Washington.
Designers are working on plans to replace the grass with a terrace akin to the poolside patio at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump is said to have discussed whether the paving should be limestone or an interchangeable hard surface, leading to the tantalising prospect of installing hardwood floors for dancing. Trump has made it clear he hopes to recreate the atmosphere of his Florida club, where he rubs shoulders with VIPs, often taking charge of the playlist with his favourite songs from opera and musicals.
The grass proposals are part of a wider revamp of the White House. Trump is redecorating the Oval Office in the gilded image of his Palm Beach residence and his penthouse in New York. The mantelpieces are crammed with gold vases and figurines, along with a replica of the FIFA World Cup trophy. Gold cherubs peer down from above doorways, gold eagles sit on side tables and even the remote control for the TV is wrapped in gilt. On the Resolute Desk sits a golden paperweight stamped with the president’s seal and name. “It needed a little life,” he told Ingraham.
The president has covered nearly every spare inch of wall space with portraits of former presidents – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan – from the White House vaults. “I think a year ago, they would have been disgraced by our country, and I think today they’re proud of our country,” Trump said of his forebears watching over him.
He has reinstated the signature Diet Coke button on his desk. “Everyone thinks that’s the nuclear button. They think that if I press that it’s the end of the world,” he said.
Incoming presidents are given the choice of seven desks, Trump revealed.
He chose the one that served Reagan and JFK. “Many great presidents sat behind that desk,” he mused. In pride of place is an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, concealed behind drapes to protect it from the light.
“It’s very cool,” said Trump, drawing back the curtain. “Just went up yesterday. Think Joe Biden would do this? I don’t think so,” the president added. “Do you think he’d think of it? Do you think he knows what it is?”
Biden, though, knew a thing or two about the Rose Garden. It was near there in October 2022 that his German shepherd Commander attacked a secret service agent who was holding a door open for the president.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said Trump’s revamp would restore the property’s grandeur. “The White House has not been given any tender, loving care in many decades, so President Trump is taking necessary steps to preserve and restore the greatness and glory of ‘the People’s House’,” Cheung said.
The Times
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