In 2025, President Donald Trump’s makeover of the White House has taken on two different forms: (1) tearing down the historic East Wing to make way for a lavish new ballroom, and (2) redecorating parts of the West Wing in a distinctly Trumpian fashion.
The New York Times’ Sam Sifton, in a newsletter published on Christmas Eve Day 2025, describes Trump’s Oval Office makeover — which, the reporter notes, is so extensive that “he’s almost out of wall space.”
“He has made it an extravagant room,” Sifton observes. “Gold is everywhere: on picture frames and gilded carvings, on seals and antiques and finials. The metal covers about a third of the walls…. Flags are abundant. There are five times as many as most other presidents displayed. A gold-framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hangs to the right of the Resolute Desk.”
Sifton’s newsletter is accompanied by two photos from the Times’ Doug Mills — one showing Joe Biden in the Oval Office during his presidency, the other showing the Oval Office since Trump’s return to the White House. And the latter has a lot more gold, which Sifton notes, is “a metaphor the president uses to telegraph his success.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Times, “He’s a maximalist.”
Some Trump critics, however, are alleging that the gold in the Oval Office may not be real gold.
Sifton explains, “All the gold — on those mirrors, on the frames of the portraits beside them, in the inlaid seal on the coffee table — has led to rumors that they’re just cheap plastic, painted gold. Trump denies it, and a White House official told The Times that while the underlying materials are made of plaster or metal, they are covered in real gold leaf. I dug this detail: A craftsman from Florida regularly travels to the White House to gild parts of the Oval Office by hand, often when the president is away on weekends.”
Read Sam Sifton’s full New York Times newsletter is available at this link (subscription required).
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