President Donald Trump snuck in a look at his latest gaudy White House renovations during a Truth Social rampage on Wednesday evening.
Trump, 80, posted a photo on his social media platform of the walkway to the West Wing, which now features his signature gilded-script sign labeling it as such.
“The newly revamped West Wing of the White House, including signage and renovated walls, maple trees, and plantings!” the president captioned the post.
The new decor is on par with many of the president’s other tacky golden additions he’s plastered across the White House.
Aside from his gilded signs and super-glued golden adornments in the Oval Office, the president said he wanted to keep the golden opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange for himself, which he rang on Monday in honor of the first trading day for his Trump Accounts.
“I’m not giving it back,” he said after ringing the ceremonial bell to open the NYSE, becoming the first president to ever do so.
White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed in their book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, that Trump’s obsession with gold dates back to his marriage to his first wife, Ivana Trump.
“Trump’s first wife, Ivana, the vice president of interior design at his company, had had a penchant for gilding everything,” The New York Times reporters wrote. “It was Ivana who was said to have first encouraged the gold obsession that soon became a hallmark of her husband’s properties.”
The president’s gold fixation manifested regularly across his business properties and has now stretched all the way to the White House.
Some of Trump’s other alterations this term include his disastrous renovation project for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and his $600 million ballroom project on the remnants of the demolished East Wing, which was discovered to have been partially funded with taxpayer dollars.
Trump shared in May that his ballroom is actually a front for a six-story underground bunker replete with a military hospital and classified research facilities.
His Reflecting Pool project, which cost over $16 million to renovate, has failed miserably. Soon after the pool was refilled following its repainting in “American Flag Blue,” the landmark experienced its worst algal bloom in years, and bystanders witnessed blue paint flakes peeling off the basin.
Trump has alleged that “leftists” have vandalized the pool by cutting up its bottom with “razor blades,” though he has yet to provide any tangible evidence to the public.
The president has said that six people have been arrested in connection with the alleged vandalism, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who faces a felony charge of destruction of federal property. Hearn’s arraignment is Thursday.
