A new book chronicling the inner workings of President Donald Trump’s second term reveals his extensive involvement in redecorating the White House — and how, reportedly, Melania Trump wasn’t always pleased with his changes.
As part of their reporting for “Regime Change,” published June 23, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan conducted over 1,000 interviews with people close to Donald Trump and sat for an hourlong interview with the president, where they wrote that he “pushed back on a few specific points” but overall did not dispute their findings.
In the book, Haberman and Swan wrote that Melania Trump considered her Rose Garden redesign from Donald Trump’s first term, which included a new limestone border around the lawn and roses in white and pastel shades, “one of her proudest achievements.” So she was “very unhappy” when Donald Trump planned to pave over it.
The couple eventually agreed to a compromise: Stone tiles would cover the grass, but the rosebushes would be left alone. The new Rose Garden Club, modeled after Mar-a-Lago‘s outdoor terrace, was unveiled in August 2025.
Donald Trump’s plans for a new White House ballroom reportedly also proved contentious, with staffers attempting to manage the president and first lady’s “competing desires about the future of the complex.”
“Mrs. Trump, who preferred a quiet environment with minimal disturbances and objected to living in a construction zone, had repeatedly expressed concern about the size and location of the ballroom,” Haberman and Swan wrote.
The president’s vision ultimately won out. The East Wing, which once housed the Office of the First Lady, was demolished in October 2025 to make way for the ballroom.
Undoing Melania’s decor
Haberman and Swan wrote that Donald Trump took pieces of White House decor that Melania Trump had curated during his first term and moved them to new locations as part of his own design projects. One such change was a mirror he transferred to the Rose Garden colonnade in March 2026.
“A massive mirror framed in gold leaf — one Melania had made the centerpiece of a first-term redesign of the Queens’ Bedroom — was relocated to the White House colonnade, where it became known as the ‘selfie’ mirror,” Haberman and Swan wrote.
According to “Regime Change,” Donald Trump also employed this tactic while redecorating his bedroom in the White House residence, where he and Melania Trump maintain separate rooms, leaving staff members feeling “caught between the two Trumps” in the weeks after the inauguration.
“Once, when staff gently reminded the President that he was taking things from the Center Hall his wife had personally selected, he made clear he didn’t care,” the book says. “He seemed almost to be competing with her — determined to have the better room. The staff resorted to photographing potential substitutes and sending the images to Mrs. Trump for approval.”
‘She’s a minimalist’
Melania Trump reportedly wasn’t big on her husband’s gilded Oval Office redesign, either. The book recounts an Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Independence Day in 2025, where the first lady entered and made it clear that “she was not a great fan of all the gold.”
“She’s a minimalist,” the book quotes the president telling Johnson. “But this is the Oval Office. It just looks better.”
Donald Trump reportedly wasn’t deterred from taking a hands-on approach, on one occasion using superglue to add more gold decorations to the fireplace mantle himself.
“As he was known to prefer his own aesthetic handiwork to anyone else’s, the sight of the President squeezing glue onto gilded appliques and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle,” Haberman and Swan wrote.
The White House and the Office of First Lady Melania Trump did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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