President Donald Trump seems committed to transforming the White House’s appearance even as his renovation efforts remain under intense scrutiny.
The 80-year-old MAGA chief has made remodeling the White House complex one of the top priorities of his second term in office.
As many Americans struggle with the rising cost of living in the Trump 2.0 era, the president is using Truth Social to rant about his taxpayer-funded residence.
“This is the horrible front of the White House, and it’s been like that for years,” Trump posted on the platform on July 11, along with two photos he identified as the building’s “Main Entrance.”
According to Newsweek, the images in Trump’s post were of the columns near the White House’s North Portico and displayed supposed “surface irregularities” on the building.
Trump then took a shot at his presidential predecessor by adding, “The condition is deplorable, just like our country was when I inherited it from Sleepy Joe Biden.”
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“The White House, as you can see in the before pictures attached, was an embarrassment,” Trump wrote before ending his statement with, “It will be a symbol of extraordinary beauty and pride!”
Trump has already given the nation a taste of his design aesthetic when he converted the historic White House Rose Garden into a resort-style patio and installed flashy golden trimmings in the Oval Office.
“Oh no. He’s going to put a bunch of gaudy gold s–t all over it like he did on the inside, isn’t he?” one concerned X user expressed.
Another poster complained, “You will be forever remembered in history as the president who was only concerned about fixing up Washington and not the country.”
“Weren’t you in office immediately prior to President Biden? Oh, and he spent a fair bit of time cleaning up the mess that you left behind,” a Trump critic tweeted.
Yahoo commenters joined in on slamming Trump for prioritizing his Washington makeover over the needs of the American people. Many responses were blunt condemnations of the commander in chief.
One Trump detractor declared, “The only thing that’s deplorable is the orange stain coward who resides in the White House.”
Trump continues to face widespread backlash for his numerous renovation plans across Washington, including his changes to the columns outside the White House.
On May 25, the president returned to the White House after delivering a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and his arrival became headline news after video from the scene went viral.
The New York-bred billionaire reportedly spent around six minutes examining the colossal white pillars near the northern entrance of the White House.
Clips of Trump’s inspection fueled speculation that the longtime real estate mogul wanted to replace the White House’s row of Ionic columns with his preferred Corinthian style.
“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump-appointed chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, told The Washington Post in March.
Both the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court buildings contain Corinthian columns, which showcase carved acanthus leaves at the top as opposed to the twin scrolls used for Ionic columns.
In recent days, printed tarps have covered the scaffolds surrounding the front of the Executive Mansion. A White House official told CBS News that the covering has “always been a part of the restoration plan.”
Trump-appointed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spoke about the remodeling of the White House’s north side during a recent appearance on the conservative “The Katie Miller Podcast.”
“You see the scaffolding on the North Portico right now?” Burgum asked Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“You know, President Trump comes out to greet a world leader, he sees door dings and the pillars and says, ‘Look at all this stuff, it needs to be repaired.’”
In addition to alterations to the White House, Trump has extended his Washington beautification endeavor to other sites such as the East Potomac Golf Links, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and the Meridian Hill Park fountain.
While crews still plan the work on the East Potomac property, officials fenced off the Reflecting Pool after green algae and peeling paint overran the tourist attraction following Trump’s multi-million-dollar overhaul.
Trump reopened Meridian Hill Park in May as part of his “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” initiative, but the makeover turned the fountain’s water murky brown, sparking more criticism against the president.
