Washington
CNN
—
As President Donald Trump works to dramatically reshape the federal government, he is also in the middle of transforming another historic aspect of the presidency: the Oval Office.
Nearly eight weeks since returning to office, Trump has tripled the number of paintings hanging on the office walls. Shelves and surfaces are adorned with flags, statues and ornaments.
And in keeping with the style he has adhered to for decades, there is gold everywhere: new gold vermeil figurines on the mantle and medallions on the fireplace, gold eagles on the side tables, gilded Rococo mirrors on the doors, and, nestled in the pediments above the doorways, diminutive gold cherubs shipped in from Mar-a-Lago. Even the remote control for the television down the hall is wrapped in gilt.
He had even toyed with the idea of hanging a chandelier in the Oval Office, according to two people familiar with his plans, though that seems unlikely now.
It all makes for a White House increasingly reminiscent of Trump’s South Florida home. Work is expected to begin within weeks on Trump’s plans to revamp the Rose Garden by paving over the grass and turning it into a patio-style seating area, much like the one where he holds court at Mar-a-Lago. The president personally reviewed the plans for the Rose Garden recently with White House curators.
Trump has discussed his vision for the outdoor space, originally designed by first lady Ellen Wilson, with visiting heads of state as they walk along the South Portico, according to an official in a visiting delegation.
On the South Lawn, the president hopes to build a new ballroom to host state dinners, modeled after the one at Mar-a-Lago, which in turn was inspired by the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. He has reviewed multiple sets of blueprints since taking office, showing them off to visitors and making tweaks to the designs. Trump has long said he’ll pay for the construction himself – he even offered to build it during the Obama administration – but it’s still not clear whether the project will proceed on the historic grounds.
“It keeps my real-estate juices flowing,” Trump told The Spectator recently of the prospective renovations. “But it’ll be beautiful.”
It all makes for a most Trump-like workspace, with the president surrounded by far more objects, curiosities and art than the men who preceded him in the office. Never known for a minimalist aesthetic, Trump appears most at home amid all the stuff: trophies, art, papers, memorabilia.
Trump has long seen his office as a showplace as much as a workplace. For decades, his corner suite on the 26th floor of Trump Tower was stuffed with collectibles on the windowsill and tables, with framed photographs and magazine covers donning the walls. The Oval Office, particularly his desk, is far more orderly, yet still reminiscent of the place where he made his fame.
Every addition to the Oval Office – no matter how big or small – comes at his direction, aides say, as he seeks to remake the space as he sees fit.
The Oval Office is the predominant power center of any administration, but since Trump returned two months ago, the room has become one of the most visible in the White House. He uses it to hold forth with visiting foreign leaders, including the remarkably hostile session with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as a venue to swear-in Cabinet secretaries and as a backdrop for his near-daily question-and-answer sessions with reporters.
“Oh, what a great feeling,” Trump said, sitting behind the Resolute Desk on Inauguration Day when asked how it felt to return to the Oval Office. “One of the better feelings I’ve ever had.”
Trump usually arrives mid-morning from the residence, where he is often up and on the phone from 6 a.m. onward, ringing different aides or allies to discuss what he’s just watched on television, read in the paper or various plans for the day. His staff knows to expect him in the West Wing closer to 10 or 11 a.m.
The space he arrives to these days has taken on the feel of a packed gallery showroom. While he knew immediately some of the portraits he wanted to hang, Trump has also reviewed catalogues upon catalogues of potential portraits from the national collection to hang in the Oval Office, flipping through laminated pages to decide which of his predecessors’ portraits he’d like to adorn the walls of the office they’ve all occupied.
After selecting which men he wants on the wall, he moves on to frames. Characteristic of how he prefers the decor at his other properties, Trump usually leans toward darker frames. In all, he has hung close to 20 paintings in the Oval Office, all of predecessors or statesmen he reveres or is inspired by. Joe Biden, by comparison, had six portraits on the walls – itself well more than Barack Obama, who hung two portraits of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, but gave over the remaining wall space to modern paintings, including two Edward Hoppers on loan from the Whitney Museum.
A large oil portrait of Ronald Reagan now takes a prominent spot to Trump’s left as he sits at his desk. Across the room, a new picture of Washington hangs above the fireplace: no longer the small painting that hung there when Trump arrived in January, but an imposing portrait by Charles Willson Peale from 1776, showing the first president with a sword.
Almost every square inch of wall space has been covered in oil portraits of founding fathers or former presidents; in some places, their frames are almost touching as they compete for space. The gallery wall now includes Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and James Polk – on loan from Capitol Hill – all staring down at the proceedings in the office.
While many presidents have found the White House to be a confining bubble, Trump often extols the beauty and grandeur of the executive mansion, particularly the Oval Office. Some presidents have held working meetings in the Roosevelt or Cabinet rooms, but Trump spends most of his day inside the Oval and the small adjoining ante rooms, including a dining room.
So far, all of the changes in this term have been centered around the décor. But during his first term, Trump presided over an extensive renovation of the Oval Office and other rooms across the West Wing. The $1.75 million renovations were completed while he was on a summer break at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“We found gold behind the walls, which I always knew. Renovations are grand,” Trump told TIME magazine then. “Remember how hard they worked? They wanted to make me happy.”
Even as the two-month mark of his return to power approaches, Trump is still adding new pieces of décor or memorabilia to the Oval Office. Some are rotating. Others seem to be on more permanent display.
On the table behind his desk sits a shiny golden replica of the FIFA World Cup Trophy, known as the Jules Rimet Trophy. Trump talks often about the next World Cup, which will take place in July across North America, with the majority of matches played in the US.
Deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, who is among the longest-serving aides to the president, posts occasional updates Trump has made.
“Every president has a right to decorate the Oval Office,” a former White House official who has worked for Democratic and Republican administrations, told CNN. “But his décor is so weirdly un-presidential, it’s more king-like.”
He’s removed some of the room’s more iconic features, including the tufts of Swedish ivy that used to sit above the fireplace. The plants are descended from cuttings originally gifted to John F. Kennedy by the Irish ambassador to the US. On the mantle now are seven gold artifacts, arranged in a row flanking a tall empire-style centerpiece.
Simple wooden side tables have been replaced by showier, marble-topped consoles, with gilded eagles on the base holding up bronze busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill.
Photographs cover a table behind Trump’s desk, including of his mother. The Resolute Desk, gifted by Queen Victoria and crafted from timbers of an Arctic exploration vessel, was sent off for refurbishment last month. A smaller desk has taken its place temporarily.
Next to it, a placard showing the body of water he’s renamed the “Gulf of America” sits permanently on an easel. Gold cups sit in recesses above the windows and along the wall.
A heavy-looking gold paperweight sits on the coffee table, the presidential seal engraved on top and the word “TRUMP” stamped on the side. At times, some guests have used it as a coaster.
And there may be more to come. The president spends most weekends at Mar-a-Lago and often returns aboard Air Force One with a new showpiece for the Oval Office or another place of honor in the White House.
