President Trump on Thursday signed a proclamation that seeks to designate as national monuments the Oval Office and the adjacent Cabinet Room, remaining focused on his renovation projects while his party reels from a rebuke in the midterm elections.
Delivering remarks from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he was sending a request to Congress to attach the federal designations to the executive spaces, which he said were the sites of “great victories.”
The announcement reinforced Mr. Trump’s public preoccupation with White House remodeling, to the near exclusion of any unprompted discussion of the election or how he plans to move ahead on his agenda, now that a Democratic Congress is set to vigorously challenge him. On Wednesday, in his first public appearance after his party’s electoral wipeout, he visited the White House ballroom construction site to celebrate and sign the final steel beam of the structure.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump, who has made significant changes to the appearance of the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, appeared to be trying to largely freeze them in place as the Oval Office National Monument.
He said the new designation would prohibit anybody from tearing down the Oval Office, changing its shape — “let’s make it square,” for instance — or making any other “major” modifications without the approval of Congress. He was less emphatic about what changes he wanted to prevent in the Cabinet Room. But he said it had been “very upgraded and made really beautiful.”
“When completed, and when we get the documentation fully done, legally binding, it’ll make it impossible for anybody ever to destroy this incredible space,” Mr. Trump said of the rooms.
If Congress does not act, though, it is unclear how a proclamation signed by one president could not simply be revised by another. Mr. Trump himself has twice sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, once in his first term and again in his second after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. re-expanded them. His actions, however, face a court challenge.
Mr. Trump, who claimed in a recent interview with Time magazine that the Secret Service had suggested that the Oval Office be “taken down” and rebuilt, did not provide a reason for what prompted the proclamation other than his affinity for the room.
“We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol like the White House itself,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a symbol of our country and the greatness of our country.”
But in his second term, Mr. Trump has made it a priority to remake the Oval Office into a symbol of his presidency and a reflection of his private properties.
He has transformed the presidential working space to mirror the triumphal style of Louis XIV, a theme that shows up at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club. The office has been saturated in gold décor, including gilded appliqués that he has himself super-glued onto the walls.
Asked on Thursday whether the next president would be allowed to take down his gold decorations, Mr. Trump replied: “They can do anything they want, as long as they do it carefully.”
During his ballroom site tour on Wednesday, Mr. Trump waxed on about the chandeliers and marble that would soon adorn the space. (Chandeliers came up again during his Oval Office discussion on Thursday.) He also mentioned his other projects, such as the new helipad on the South Lawn.
Mr. Trump’s appreciation for preservation has not extended to other parts of the White House, which is already designated a National Historic Landmark.
Last fall, Mr. Trump demolished the East Wing — after promising not to — to make room for the construction of his 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
Based on what Mr. Trump described on Thursday, he was seeking to ensure that his favorite places in the West Wing did not suffer the same fate.
“I just thought it was very important that nobody be allowed to come in and take it down, and try and do something with it because every once in a while they’ll look and they’ll say, ‘Oh, maybe what we’ll do is we’ll put some glass up that’s a little bit better or something,” he said. “And I say, ‘No, you’re not going to do anything.’”
He added: “And if anyone ever decides to come and start knocking down walls, you’ll call me wherever I may be, and I will come back here and I will make sure it never happens.”
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