Trump struggles with governing details -- but remains focused on interior decorating

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The president clearly struggles when it comes to policymaking, but when it comes to interior decorating, Trump apparently has quite a bit to say.

America’s decorator president … SMDH

Trump struggles with governing details — but remains focused on interior decorating www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— @jimrissmiller.bsky.social 2025-07-09T21:18:20.549Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-struggles-governing-details-remains-focused-interior-decorating-rcna217809

But when it comes to interior decorating, Trump apparently has quite a bit to say. As The Washington Post summarized:

After talking about tragedy in Texas, about war in Ukraine and Gaza, about bombs on Iran and about global tariffs, President Donald Trump revealed perhaps his biggest passion: the aesthetic changes he has made to the White House. He is, in many ways, the world’s most powerful interior designer.

As the Republican’s second term got underway, he and his team took a surprising interest in interior design, specifically targeting portraits and murals of former officials the president doesn’t like. This dovetailed with Trump taking great pride in putting a copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall in the Oval Office.....

This included an extended riff on the color of the room he and his team were in at the time and a lengthy story of how he obtained a clock that used to be in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7qtoo7nxqxarrsijohjhbw4/post/3lthugmnozc23

Link to tweet

This comes on the heels of a series of related reports, including news that there’s a picture of Trump alongside first lady portraits in the White House, and a separate report about replacing a portrait of Barack Obama with a painting related to the assassination attempt that targeted Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And don’t get me started on the president and his “gold guy” adding gold finishes to the Oval Office.

Of course, it wouldn’t be altogether fair to say Trump invests excessive amounts of time in interior design and decorating, because he also cares about exterior design. He and his team have, for example, torn up the White House Rose Garden and installed a flagpole that the president seemed awfully excited about.

In 1998, the late David Broder criticized Bill Clinton in a memorable way. “He came in here and he trashed the place — and it’s not his place,” the longtime Washington Post columnist said.

Nearly three decades later, the quote comes to mind anew.

[Ocelot II]

1. Unfortunately he has no talent for it.

He's just white trash with money; thinks gold on everything makes a place look classy. Pro tip: It doesn't. It makes the place look like a bordello.

[True Blue American]

2. I am waiting on the

Heart shaped, satin bed.

[brush]

4. With mirrors on the ceiling over it.

[True Blue American]

10. A funny

We were on a Paratroopers Covention in New Orlreans.
Had rooms at the Monteleone Hotel I strëtched out on the bed, looked up, the ceiling was mirrors.
Everyone at the Conventioon had to have a picture. The room was right above the revoľving bar. The old soldiers had fun with that one.

[wcmagumba]

3. Trumpy's White House with fake gold trim along with giant flagpoles encompasses the latest

"trends"...you know what they say about men who install giant flagpoles...hmmm...

[peggysue2]

5. Someone refresh my memory

What exactly did Bill Clinton do to the White House while he served as POTUS?

He trashed the place?

Is this a reference to the Monica Lewinsky affair? He tainted the atmosphere with his reckless, sexual adventure with a twenty-something intern?

We have a demented fascist sitting in the White House, a man and movement that threatens the entire country and world, a man who is an adjudicated rapist.

Bill Clinton's indiscretions pale in comparison.

So, no, David Broder's comment doesn't come to mind anew. It just sets my hair on fire!

As for Trump's designing? He's into a trashy Versailles' vibe akin to Saddam Hussein's penchant for all things gold.

Dictators love this stuff.

As for the Rose Garden? It's been beloved longer than Broder's quote; it must, therefore, be obliterated, buried under a slab of concrete.

Dictators love this stuff.

[brush]

6. trump's obsession with interior decorating ranks right up there with Kristi Noem's...

obsession with which cosplay, cowgirl image of her that her constituents prefer.

And there two incompetents, part of the clown car cabal, are running respectively, the economy and the illegal deportation gangs kidnapping people off the streets.

[kentuck]

7. I think he should stop worrying about getting on Mt Rushmore....

...and worry more about being at the top of the "worst President" list. I think he may win it going away.

[Ocelot II]

8. There should be something like an Un-Mount Rushmore,

a dark cave where the images of the worst presidents are carved in reverse bas-relief on the dank, dripping walls, lit only by flickering torches.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Jen Psaki calls out Trump for focusing more on White House redecorating than Texas floods

According to the MSNBC host, the president’s comments about the decor reveal exactly where his “head is at” as rescue efforts continue.

Jen Psaki calls out Trump for focusing more on White House redecorating than Texas floods - MSNBC

apple.news/AtJmHC6GBTG2...

— (@oc88.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T19:48:48.217Z

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/jen-psaki-calls-out-trump-over-cabinet-comments-texas-floods-rcna217749

Jen Psaki is calling out Donald Trump over the shocking vanity of comments he made during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.....

While Trump did speak briefly about the ongoing federal response, including his plan to visit Texas on Friday, as Psaki noted, “He also had another pressing matter he felt the need to address in that meeting.”

“He spent almost 15 minutes talking about how he redecorated the Cabinet room of the White House,” Psaki said, before playing several clips of the president boasting about his interior decorating efforts, including his choice to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson and to fit the room with new drapes and lamps. The president also mused about adding gold leaf to the walls.

“Painting the ceilings gold isn’t exactly a pressing issue for Trump’s Cabinet right now,” Psaki quipped. “But it does tell you a little bit about where Trump’s head is at.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dafieuj4jlcvdyj2hfuevvsg/post/3ltkag6q2ne2g

[Kid Berwyn]

11. King Taco is a moron fascinated by fabric swatches.

Trump, the billion-dollar loser — I was his ghostwriter and saw it happen

Charles Leerhson
Yahoo.com, May 9, 2019

EXCERPT...

I tend to see my time with him — the first part of it, anyway, before things started going bad in a hurry — as his “King Midas” period. I never said this to him; if I had, he probably would have thought I was suggesting he enter the muffler business. But there was a stretch of months when everything he touched turned into a deal. The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of them himself. As a result, a failing real estate developer who had little idea of what he was doing and less interest in doing it once he’d held the all-important press conference wound up owning three New Jersey hotel-casinos, the Plaza Hotel, the Eastern Airlines Shuttle and a 281-foot yacht.

A real go-getter, right? But Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day — which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his “French military helicopter” to Atlantic City — where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone — whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn’t. One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the “rack rate” (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldn’t cover the monthly payment of the loan he’d taken out to buy the place. In other words, he’d made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand. Or perhaps Trump knew it because someone had told him, but didn’t want to think about it. The one thing he is above-average at is compartmentalization.

Source:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090000640.html

DU OP from 2019:

https://democraticunderground.com/100212088139

[tanyev]

12. All in favor of Donny resigning so he can follow his true passion for design:

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. trump does not care about governing but does care about decorating

[newdeal2]

14. With Melania MIA, who will put up the f'ing Christmas tree?