When he’s not busy ending wars, deporting illegal aliens, overhauling the federal bureaucracy and drastically reordering world trade, the president has big plans for matters closer to home.
Donald Trump the property developer is busting out of the political straitjacket to bling the Oval Office and reimagine the White House.
From planning a “beautiful, magnificent” new ballroom to paving over the Rose Garden to create a convivial, Mar-a-Lago-style terrace, the 45th and 47th president is determined to make his mark on the White House this time.
“It keeps my real estate juices flowing,” he told a reporter recently.
Last week, after announcing a pause on reciprocal tariffs, Trump took personal interest in rearranging presidential portraits in the grand White House entrance hall.
Because he is serving non-consecutive presidential terms, he gets to display two official portraits in the White House and has been mulling four or five traditional versions in muted tones created by official artists, including one memorable painting in which he looks fierce as he leans on the edge of the Resolute Desk.
But last week he chose a temporary artistic addition to the grand foyer: a colorful painting of himself after last year’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., with his face bloodied and fist raised, capturing the iconic moment that he thinks may have turned the election for him.
The striking painting will stay in the foyer for two or three months, before a more traditional portrait takes its place. It replaced a modernistic portrait of Barack Obama, which was moved across the hall to replace one of George W. Bush. Bush was moved into the stairway that leads up to the private residence, where he now sits alongside his father, a nice touch for the Bush family, who are due to visit the White House for an event in the summer.
Keeping Obama’s portrait in pride of place in the foyer was driven in part because its modern frame matches the new Trump portrait — but also, judging by Trump’s cordial demeanor with Obama at Jimmy Carter’s state funeral in January, he prefers him to the younger Bush, whose presidency he has frequently disparaged as “failed,” citing the $8 trillion spent intervening in the Middle East, which achieved nothing but “death and destruction.”
Trump has also ordered a huge painting of Abraham Lincoln to be moved out of relative obscurity in the stairway into the cross hall to replace a portrait of Bill Clinton, which will find an appropriate new home.
Dept. of interior design
Where the Joe Biden presidential portrait will go when it is completed is not yet clear, but it’s hard to avoid the quip that it belongs in the basement, or that it will have a horizontal format to befit his well-known position reclining on a beach chair.
The most marked change Trump has made to the White House, so far, however, is in the Oval Office, where he keeps adding more golden flourishes, most of which he flies in from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The gilding of his office began with seven golden urns placed on top of the mantlepiece, replacing ersatz shrubbery left by Biden.
Full op-ed continued over at The New York Post:
Trump’s big, beautiful, Mar-a-Lago-inspired renovation plans for the White House: ‘Keeps my real estate juices flowing’ https://t.co/0QtDJzE80Z pic.twitter.com/FuSbvyoQMy
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) April 14, 2025