President Donald Trump appears to have decided that the federal government’s most prized possessions are his for the taking.
Speaking to roughly 200 mining executives at the State Department on Friday, Trump said being president means he can remove things from government buildings—and even “grab a painting” for the Oval Office should the mood strike him.
“It’s a beautiful building,” Trump remarked as he looked around from his seat at the State Department desk. “I’m liking the chandeliers. I like those Corinthian columns, but cutting them out would be not good.”
He emphasized: “I’m allowed to do it,” as he appeared to claim broad authority to take government property. “Every once in a while I’ll come in here and grab a painting and put it into the Oval Office,” he said.
Trump also ran his fingers over a small, solid-gold replica of a deep-sea nodule sitting on the desk, a gift presented Friday by the CEO of American Ocean Minerals ahead of the mining-industry roundtable.
After the roundtable, the White House announced more than $2 billion in funding to revitalize the industry, along with more than $180 million for mining-school investments aimed at boosting the workforce.
Trump came under heavy fire in his first administration for failing to account for some 100 gifts valued at $250,000 given by foreign leaders to the presidential office. Expensive foreign gifts belong to the U.S. government, not the individual president, who is allowed to keep only lower-value items.
Trump also has a history of treating government records as personal property. He took home several boxes of classified documents, mixing reports with personal effects, including his wife’s clothing. He stored stacked boxes of secret documents on a stage and close to a toilet at Mar-a-Lago.
Posters on X went wild over the Fox News video about Trump eyeing State Department treasures he’d like to grab, with one user posting a photo of boxes of classified files in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
“I love stealing things,” said a mocking clip featuring character Creed from The Office.
Many observers couldn’t help but notice that Trump used the word “grab” when he said he could take whatever he wanted. The word echoed one of his most infamous uses of it: the hot-mic capture of Trump boasting on Access Hollywood before he was elected president the first time that he could kiss any woman he wanted without asking, and “grab [women] by the p---y.” He later dismissed it as “locker room banter.”
