Donald Trump has sent further shivers down the spine of history and architecture enthusiasts across the country with a Truth Social post after spending a very stagey six minutes futzing about over a block of stone at the White House.
“The Only President Who Knows How to Fix The White House,” the 79-year-old leader wrote around 7.30 a.m. on Tuesday. He attached a photo of himself from the day before, meditatively examining the foot of one of the building’s distinctive limestone pillars.
Footage of the odd moment, captured on Trump’s return Monday afternoon from his Memorial Day Speech at Arlington National Cemetery, showed the president walking about the column and discussing the structure with his aides.
It remains unclear why the president appears to have committed such time and unusual focus, in full view of the cameras, to the state of the pillar. But his Tuesday morning post appeared to be a nod to rumors floating around the MAGAverse that he may be planning further work at the White House.
The Washington Post reported earlier in March that the Trump-appointed chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, Rodney Mims Cook Jr, had proposed swapping the building’s longstanding Ionic columns with others in the more ornate, Corinthian style that Trump apparently prefers.
“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Cook told the newspaper. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”
Others have struggled to muster the same enthusiasm. The proposed swap is a “completely inappropriate idea and at odds with universally held historic preservation standards,” said Bruce Redman Becker, a Joe Biden appointee whom Trump removed from the Commission last year.
It comes as Trump endeavours to remodel the White House, and indeed large portions of D.C., in his own image.
He has torn down the building’s historic East Wing to build himself a ballroom with a price tag that has now ballooned to $400 million, with a possible further $1 billion landed on taxpayers pending a Republican push to up security features for the new annex.
He has also patioed over the historic White House Rose Garden, revamped the West Wing Colonnade to feature a “Presidential Walk of Fame” deriding his opponents, and refurbed the Oval Office because apparently, it needed more gold. The Lincoln Bathroom is now entirely made of marble.
Those efforts have accompanied resurfacing the Reflecting Pool by the Lincoln Memorial to ensure the waters are “American flag blue” ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday later in July, as well as charging ahead to erect his very own “Arc du Trump,” modeled after Paris’ Arc du Triomphe, near the Arlington cemetery.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
