Let Them Eat Renovations
The Trumpian Twilight Zone.
ABC News reports: President Trump shows off White House’s Lincoln Bathroom renovated entirely in marble.
President Donald Trump isn’t just remaking the East Wing of the White House. On Friday, he showed off an entirely renovated Lincoln Bathroom — white marble with gold accents — on his social media platform.
“I renovated the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House,” Trump wrote on Truth Social alongside photos of the before and after. “It was renovated in the 1940s in an art deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era.”
He continued, “I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble. This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!”
He also posted about the Kennedy Center renovations.
I am struck by the fact that I cannot imagine any previous administration, regardless of political party, wherein the US could be in the middle of a shutdown and where the President could breezily be engaged in a variety of vanity projects, and it would just be some side note.
All of this is also from the guy who was allegedly going to tackle fraud and waste, and yet there is always money for whatever project Trump wants.
I continue to laugh at the notion that the mainstream press is allied with Democrats or “the left” in any way.
I realize that this is all, to a degree, dog bites man, because Trump is Trump (and nothing says “Trump” like gaudy renovations), but by the same token, this is not normal behavior for a President of the United States.
Normal political gravity would normally mean that when millions of Americans are facing massive increases in costs for insurance, as well as losing food assistance, bragging about the new marble in the bathroom with the gold-plated fixtures would be bad form. Even more so when you are a president who has done nothing, even performative, let alone substantive, to try to solve the shutdown.
Indeed, as James Joyner noted today, SNAP is mandatory spending, and Trump’s attempt to forestall that spending is, yet again, an example of him trying to ignore the legislative branch.
On that topic, I would share the following from Heather Cox Richardson:
Yesterday a reporter asked Representative Joe Neguse, a Democrat of Colorado, about the administration’s withholding of reserve funds Congress intended would fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “If we come to November first, and these contingency funds haven’t been released, if nothing has been accomplished in restoring SNAP benefits, will you call on your Democratic colleagues to reopen the government and deal with these shutdown crises immediately?”
Neguse called out the dynamic in which observers refuse to hold President Donald J. Trump and MAGA Republicans to account and instead demand Democrats step in to fix whatever crisis is at hand. “The basis for your question is, and maybe the better way to state it would be, if the Trump administration continues to violate the law, if the Trump administration unlawfully refuses to release funds so that families in Colorado don’t go hungry, if the Trump administration refuses to follow the law, as they have for the better course of the last nine months, violating statute after statute, if in that scenario these actions unfold, then how will Democrats respond?” Neguse answered.
“That [in] my view would be a more fair characterization of the question that you’ve posed,” Neguse continued, “because it does feel a little bit like we’re in the Twilight Zone here with an administration that is lawless, violates the law with impunity, is now doing so with respect to the release of funds for families that may go hungry.”
Twilight Zone, indeed.
BTW: I cannot stress enough how many ads one gets on Truth Social, and that Trump’s ownership of the platform and usage of it as a communication tool is him monetizing the presidency.
Trump is determined to tun the White House into Mar a Lago. Next, he’ll put a nine hole golf course on the south lawn and rent the building for conventions.
You should probably append this post to bring in news of the Great Gatsby party Trump hosted at MAL last night while his administration slows SNAP contingency fund distribution in court.
Everything with Trump is Casino-chic, circa 2005 or so. Probably more Caesar’s Palace than the more tasteful Wynn or Fontainebleau. All-in on cheesy gold appliqué and white marble. He’s a tacky man.
Murc’s Law.
@Michael Reynolds:
Have you ever known of anyone who learned less and grew less over his life than Trump. He’s prez of the United States in the midst of shutdown, Ukraine, Gaza, No Kings, tariffs, and he’s focusing on tacky real estate development stuff, where he feels at home.
Let them eat Xitts!
All the “bling” aesthetics of a parvenu princeling, or a second-tier dictator.
And Trump wonders why the “east coast elites” and the Europeans regard him with scorn.
Real power and confidence does not require tasteless frippery.
Compare the cool restraint of Eisenhower’s Oval Office to Trump’s overdecorated ludicrousness
MAGA might reply: “but look at the Elysee Palace, or Windsor.”
The counter being, they are a product of history, in context with the buildings themselves, not an application of gaudy add-ons.
And in many cases, not that over the top.
See No 10 Cabinet Rooms
That new bathroom remodel is awful. It looks like a mid-tier hotel bathroom that is trying (and failing) to look like a high-end hotel bathroom.
He’s getting a pass from the press on EVERYTHING. The notion that DOGE cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” was laughable to begin with, but the idea that a ballroom, a (tasteless) bathroom renovation, Kennedy Center updates (which will also be awful), and all of that tacky AF gold-foil applique crap that’s being hot-glued to every flat surface in the White House are somehow priorities that merit funding more than, say, SNAP benefits or literally anything else institutional that this clown show has done…
It’s appalling and discouraging. JFC.
I seriously doubt that polished marble and gold-plated fittings were found in the Civil War White House, when people routinely spat tobacco juice on the floor and reportedly there were only two WCs in the entire building (most staff and visitors used outhouses). But I have to say the vanity in the pre-renovations room looks cheap and crappy, with all the plumbing exposed. I wonder how old the photo is.
@Ken_L:
I recall reading somewhere about Louis XIV’s Versailles that the building was so large and the “amenities” so few, that servants often had to remove piles of excrement from corners of corridors.
Ah, here we are.
Or perhaps that was just foreign ambassadors passing an opinion?
I still think, if you really have to remodel the White House, why not get us Brits to do the job?
After all, we’ve done it before.
“Special relationship”, and all that.
😉
I looked at the linked ABC article as I couldn’t figure out the bathtub. Turns out there is a shower next to it. But no window coverings yet. I bet they’ll have gold tassels. I hope there are rugs or mats as it looks very slippery, not to modern code. But who needs code when you are the best, scratch that, superb, better than best, designer evvah? If he wants appropriate to the Civil War, how about chamber pots? About 15 years ago I went to a waterfront estate sale of a woman that had been a madam in the 70-80s with everything oversized. Tacky and I referred to it as French Versailles meets whore house, how a poor person imagines how the rich live (or 3rd world rich folk).
Trump is a dog marking his territory. He’s determined to make the White House a Trump Property.
This time around he’s already rich-trashed interior White House rooms with Dollar Store Tony Montana Scarface gold ornamentation. In his 1st term he gave Melania the task of transforming the iconic Rose Garden in a soul less Valet Parking Zone Style. Too soon for me, we’re going to have a two-acre St. Petersburg Style Winter Palace Ballroom – one that dwarfs the White House – and saturated with more Scarface gold chintz.
@Ken_L:
The previous renovation to the bathroom was done in the 1940s in an Art Deco style, and honestly exposed plumbing makes sense in an older, historical building. Easy and quick to get to for repairs…it’s probably why this bathroom has lasted as long as it has.
I have no doubt that it was probably high time to renovate, given that time frame. But no one can convince me that this “Canopy, by Hilton” design works for the White House, nor that posting this “upgrade” photo in the middle of a shutdown, right before SNAP benefits are cut off, are good ideas.