Bling-obsessed Donald Trump has flaunted the gaudy touches he’s added to the White House in a bizarre video showing off his gold haul, but some have called out the timing of his post.
The president has treated the White House like his personal design project in his second term, paving over the Rose Garden, remaking the West Wing colonnade, and commissioning a towering new ballroom.
Perhaps most notably, however, the 79-year-old former real estate developer has adorned interiors with tacky gold details, trinkets, and other flashy decor. He was eager to boast about his gilded extravagance on Truth Social Sunday.
Posting a silent video panning across dozens of glimmering ornaments laid out on a table, Trump wrote, “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House.”
He bragged, “Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!!”
However, critics have compared the dazzling display of gold to European royalty and the very excess the United States’ founding fathers aimed to avoid. Others have called out the gilded trimmings, medallions, cherubs, coasters, and moldings for looking tacky and cheap.
While he claims everything to be “quality 24 Karat Gold,” Trump previously faced accusations that some of his gold decor can be found at Home Depot for a bargain price.
As Trump showed off his haul on Sunday, Americans followed updates on the shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan.
A U.S. Marine veteran opened fire at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel and set it ablaze, killing at least four and injuring eight others.
Trump posted on Truth Social at around 1 p.m. Sunday that he had been briefed on the “horrendous shooting.”
“The suspect is dead, but there is still a lot to learn. This appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America,” he wrote. “THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!”
Social media users quickly pointed out the timing of Trump’s haul, which went live just after 4:30 p.m., with one asking “HOW is he posting THIS after what happened last night in NC, and today in Michigan?”
Another responded to Vice President JD Vance’s post where he said the “entire administration is monitoring things” by slamming, “Monitoring? No Trump is busy bragging about his 24kt gold...”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on the president’s video of his gold decor.
Trump added even more of his favorite element to the White House last month, securing the FIFA World Cup trophy after begging FIFA President Gianni Infantino to leave it in the Oval Office.
While touting his new trophy he didn’t win, he confessed that gold is the way to his heart: “That’s a solid gold trophy. They know how to get to me, you know?”
Trump’s taste for gilded spectacles is matched by his appetite for grandeur, as exemplified by the $200 million grand ballroom he has ordered.
New renderings for the building show the ballroom—financed in part by corporations such as Google, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin—will be significantly larger than the White House itself and, naturally, feature numerous gold accents.
Nearby, the oft-photographed walkway connecting the Executive Residence to the West Wing has been transformed into a colonnade filled with gold-framed images of all of America’s past presidents, except Joe Biden, whom Trump replaced with a photo of an autopen.
