Last week we talked about Donald Trump, noted interior design aficionado, making noticeable changes to White House decor. The first edit happened in the Grand Foyer, where it’s traditional for the two most recent presidential portraits to be on display. So naturally Trump replaced Obama’s portrait with “artwork” depicting his own failed assassination attempt. In the Oval Office, a Swedish Ivy plant given to JFK by the Irish ambassador sat prominently on the fireplace mantel for 60 years. Trump deported that plant for parts unknown and set up a suite of gold statuettes instead. Deplorable. Turns out, Trump had professional help in making the White House gold again: the Wall Street Journal reports that he flew in his “gold guy” from Florida to (heavy-handedly) sprinkle the Midas Mar-a-Lago touch, for an overall style that I’m calling “Ego Rococo.”
A piece in The Wall Street Journal published on April 16 revealed that the politician, 78, enlisted cabinetmaker John Icart, who has worked on projects at Mar-a-Lago, to add gold finishes throughout the White House.
The newspaper reported that Trump has added multiple gold-colored touches throughout the government building, including golden borders to his and Vice President J.D. Vance’s portraits, gilded carvings for the fireplace mantel, a gold Trump crest in a doorway and gold coasters with his last name on it, among others.
Trump also reportedly brought gold cherubs from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Icart is reportedly the person responsible for executing some of the president’s major design choices and was referred to as Trump’s “gold guy” by an adviser, per WSJ.
The Florida resident reportedly traveled to Washington, D.C., with Trump on Air Force One to assist with the decorations. While Icart declined to comment on the article, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the newspaper in an email, “It’s the Golden Office for the Golden Age.”
Trump had another flashy interior design idea in mind for the White House that never came to fruition, according to WSJ.
An administration official told the outlet that the president had the Oval Office examined to see if he could hang a chandelier in the room, but was told it was too heavy for the specific location.
In a March interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Trump opened up about his gold design choices while giving her a tour of the White House.
When Ingraham pointed out the cherubs from his Mar-a-Lago estate, he said, “They’re gold, all gold. It’s angels. They say angels bring good luck and we need a lot of luck in this country with what they’ve done over the last four years.”
The camera then panned to show the flashy gold fixtures throughout the building.
“Throughout the years, people have tried to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold, but they have never been able to do it,” Trump explained of the symbolic color. “They’ve never been able to match gold with gold paint, that’s why it’s gold.”
I can’t help but feel like this is what they’re letting Donny boy play at while the people really in charge work on dismantling the government. Anyway, a few things: I’m positively shocked he deigned to extend the gold border to JD Vance’s portrait. I honestly would’ve expected no frame/border at all, or at the very least, silver. Maybe gold is just the only color he can think of these days. What am I saying, there’s always orange! What else… A chandelier in the Oval Office was ruled out for being too heavy for the building. Where exactly in the Oval was this planned for, right over the desk? I think you know where my mind is headed with this.
Out of a bouquet of things to pick apart, though, it’s this quote that’s doing me in: “Throughout the years, people have tried to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold, but they have never been able to do it. … They’ve never been able to match gold with gold paint, that’s why it’s gold.” What in the ever-loving f–king hell is this nonsensical, failed cognition test of an arrangement of words? It’s like a really, really, bigly bad Dr. Seuss passage. “They don’t have paint that looks like gold, that is the lie that I’ve been sold. They do not have paint that can match, not enough to make a splatch.” Also, is there some international intelligence conspiracy afoot to keep Trump from learning that there IS in fact gold paint? I’m not against such a thing, I just want to know.
Photos credit: Ufficio Stamapa/AGF Foto/Avalon, Geopix/Avalon, Chris Kleponis/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com, POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com, Ufficio Stamapa/AGF Foto/Avalon
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·