President Donald Trump showcased his shimmering Oval Office makeover during an awkward tour.
Trump, 79, has made much of his gold-heavy rejig of presidential HQ, and invited venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg from the All-In Podcast to admire the results earlier this month.
Trump told the podcasters that kings, queens, and business leaders enter the room and “want time to digest it.”
The president pointed out the gaudy accents that certainly take time to digest. His tweaks include gold-plated moldings and designs on the room’s doors, bookcases, and above its fireplace.
Despite his claims that everything is “very expensive” 24-carat gold, Trump has faced accusations that a gold-accented applique seen on the fireplace could be a $58 “Ekena Millwork Onlay” available at Home Depot.
Whatever he has used for the shiny spruce-up, the president is clearly a proud man. “This is the new and improved Oval Office because I had a little time and we did a lot things that were good,” Trump told the podcasters during the tour, recorded on Sept. 4 and released this week.
He told them how he also retrieved paintings from the White House vault and promptly covered the walls. He pointed out a couple of “original George Washington” paintings, as well as a piece depicting Franklin D. Roosevelt, to “modernize” the room.
“I picked them all. They were in the vaults for, in some cases—not in the case of FDR—but in the case of many of them, in the vaults for over 100 years,” the president said.
Trump also revealed that he took a portrait of Ronald Reagan from the lobby and put it up beside the Resolute Desk.
He seemed to throw shade at the White House curators—who he said wield “a lot of power”—when speaking about the framed Declaration of Independence on the wall to the right of his desk.
“They can tell you no without saying no,” he said, adding that two presidents had previously wanted to erect the original document. They were blocked from doing so, he claimed.
“But I think they liked me better,” Trump added. “They know I take good care of things.”
“People, the biggest in the world, they walk into this office and they just want to look,” Trump said, diverting back to his gold washout.
He confided that “we added a lot of 24-carat gold,” which he said had been “very expensive.”
“I think it’s very beautiful. When you look at the fireplace, when you have a leader sitting on the one side and the other side, you look at what’s behind, with the lights beaming, and that’s all 24-carat gold and that’s why it just beams,” he explained to Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar.
Elizabeth Warren called for a probe this week into whether Sacks has violated ethics rules.
Trump sounded nonplussed when he was asked if previous administrations enjoyed the same shimmering sensation. “They didn’t have gold, they didn’t have any gold!” he told the group. “And they do now.”
“I just felt that it was important for this office to take on a look that’s appropriate,” he said. “I do this stuff because I like it, because basically, I like real estate. And I like building.”
He said the White House “needed some love,” before adding his customary dig against an old foe. “You think it got it with Biden? I don’t think so.”
“You think he does this? You think he says, ‘That marble is not looking good, we have to replace that’? Nah, he doesn’t do that.”
Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, and his “besties,” laughed on cue at the president’s barbs.
After Peter Thiel broke ranks and became the first high-profile Silicon Valley type to endorse Trump in 2016, putting down over a million dollars to support Trump-aligned groups, Palihapitiya said he would “absolutely” get rid of a board member at one of his companies if they followed suit.
The mood shifted, especially after Tesla and X boss Elon Musk got on the Trump hype train, and soon Palihapitiya was all in. Last year, he and Sacks even hosted a Trump fundraiser that raised $12 million.
With Friedberg, one of Google’s first 1,000 employees, and Jason Calacanis, an early success story of the dotcom boom, who was not on the private tour, the venture capitalists lead one of the most influential podcasts in tech. But they are serious businessmen in their own right, something that appeals to Trump. “This is three outstanding people that really understand the world of Silicon Valley,” he told them at the start of the tour. The venture capitalists have an estimated combined net worth of up to $4 billion.
