Donald Trump’s petty tweak to White House as renovations and redecorations continue

Donald Trump has added another touch to his ongoing renovation and redecoration of the White House, one aimed at mocking several of the presidents who came before him.

A few months ago, Mr Trump unveiled a new “presidential walk of fame” on the wall of a portico outside the Oval Office, featuring portraits of every president.

There was one petty detail even then: where Joe Biden’s face should have been, Mr Trump instead put up a photo of an autopen, a device presidents have used for decades to affix their signature to documents. Signing stuff is a big, boring part of the job.

(The joke, from Mr Trump, is that the aged Mr Biden was so out of it during his presidency that his staff used an autopen to sign things without his knowledge. Thus, the autopen was the real president.)

There’s a cheeky new addition to that walk of fame, but first we should note that it is merely one among many Trumpian tweaks to the White House.

Mr Trump has also replaced the West Wing’s famous Rose Garden with a Mar-a-Lago-esque patio, reminiscent of what you’d see outside a particularly sad Pret-a-Manger in Brighton.

More and more gold accents have been creeping into the building’s interior. Here’s an article with some snobby interior design experts crapping on that.

Cursive lettering has appeared on the wall outside the Oval Office to remind people that it is, indeed, the Oval Office.That one has the vibe of the signs that point you towards reception at a passable, almost fetching, low-budget hotel. Like, you would happily stop there during a road trip to recharge, before continuing on to your actual destination.

And of course, Mr Trump has bulldozed the East Wing, which held the First Lady’s offices, to build a new ballroom, which is reportedly set to dwarf the iconic main structure.

The original architect on that project was fired after arguing with the President about its ballooning dimensions.

(Sorry, I just remembered that Melania Trump is releasing a documentary about herselfsoon, with a theatrical run, and I’m imagining how MAGA would have reacted if Michelle Obama had done anything like that in – what’s the equivalent year? – 2013. It is tickling me. About seven different TV and radio hosts would have suffered indignation-induced strokes.)

Anyway, the walk of fame. As of today, each portrait is accompanied by a plaque or two describing the tenure of the president in question.

And reader, I’ll be honest: it’s funny. It is no easy thing for a gag to be universallyhilarious, but whether you’re laughing along with Mr Trump’s wit or marvelling at his pettiness, there is mirth to be had here.

How to summarise? Think: a museum featuring exhibits on all the biggest musicians of the past century. But the curator is Taylor Swift, and these people are all exes of hers, and so she wrote each plaque to be its own short, self-contained diss track. Also, her vocabulary has receded to that of your average Year 5 student.

I’ve overcomplicated that. Many of these plaques essentially read like one of Mr Trump’s social media posts.

A fun additional element is that the guy clearly lost interest once the presidents in question stopped being his nemeses. So you get full-on Truth Social rant content for this century, then some self-aggrandising asides for the eighties and nineties, and from that point onwards, the text is so innocuous that it could have been lifted from Wikipedia.

Some people say Mr Trump is a vindictive man. One thing you must acknowledge, though, is that he has no beef with Dwight Eisenhower.

Here is what the official White House walk of fame has to say about Barack Obama.

“Barack Hussein Obama was the first Black President, a community organiser, one-term senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American history,” Mr Obama’s plaque reads.

“As President, he passed the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress, and the Election of the largest House Republican majority since 1946.

“He presided over a stagnant Economy, approved the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, and signed the one-sided Paris Climate Accords, both of which were later terminated by President Donald J. Trump.

“Under Obama, the ISIS Caliphate spread across the Middle East. Libya collapsed into chaos, and Russia invaded and took Crimea, in Ukraine. He crippled small businesses with crushing regulation and environmental red tape, devastated American coal miners, and weaponised the IRS and Federal bureaucracies against his political opponents.

“Obama also spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump, and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American history. His handpicked successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.”

It’s giving ... what is it giving? What Joffrey Baratheon would have written about his predecessors as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms? Something along those lines.

Here is the Biden entry.

“Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History,” it says. Bold, that, coming from a man who keeps appearing to fall asleep during his own cabinet meetings.

“Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the US, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.

“His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the US Dollar to lose more than 20 per cent of its value in four years.”

Is it worth me noting that the highest inflation in US history did not happen under the Biden presidency? Should we be fact-checking any of this? Nah, I spose not.

“His Green New Scam surrendered American Energy Dominance and, by abolishing the Southern Border, Biden let 21 million people from all over the World pour into the United States, including from prisons, jails mental institutions, and insane asylums.”

Sorry, really sorry, but I do need to note how amusing it is that Mr Trump still, after all these years, doesn’t seem to understand that asylum seekers do not come from insane asylums. It’s a fun quirk. Like your nan who thinks “the Facebook” is a literal book, a la the Yellow Pages.

“Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked’, Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers,” the plaque continues.

“They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen.

“Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace.

“Biden weaponised Law Enforcement against his political opponents, while also prosecuting many other innocent people. He left office issuing blanket pardons to Radical Democratic criminals and thugs, as well as members of the Biden Crime Family – But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”

Someone had to make these plaques, by the way. They had to transcribe all this text in bronze lettering. And before that, a staffer in the White House presumably looked over the words and approved them. “Yep, that looks good, definitely sane and normal.”

Does that person go home and gossip to their spouse about how weird their job is? Surely there’s a niche Netflix series in this, called The Staffer, or something. Jason Statham in the starring role. After The Beekeeper I presume no ideas are too silly for him.

Let’s keep going.

The entry on George W. Bush is quite mild by comparison. It does admonish him for starting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying they “should not have happened”.

Bill Clinton’s one is surprisingly dry, with no mention of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, though it does end with a joyful note that “in 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”.

The entry for Ronald Reagan asserts that he was a supporter of the current President.

“He was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House. Likewise, President Trump was a fan of his!” the plaque claims.

As far as we know, from public records, Mr Reagan had no opinion on Mr Trump at all.

The two were pictured shaking hands once. In recent years, Mr Trump has repeatedly shared a fake quote attributed to Mr Reagan: “For the life of me, and I will never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president.”

I must say. Regarding the pictures and the plaques. I’m not sure who any of this is for.

Is the idea that Mr Trump, when he’s hosting the president of Estonia or wherever, will take them on a walk through the portico? Like, is it a show-and-tell thing?

“Here’s the entry on Obama, or Barack Hussein Obama, as I like to call him. See how I call it the ‘Unaffordable Care Act’? Pretty funny, huh? Man, that guy was a loser.”

Or is it something for Mr Trump himself to walk past every day, to give him a little ego boost? I sympathise; it’s been at least 15 years since I could reliably enjoy that ego boost from looking in the mirror.

I’ll leave you with the words Mr Trump approved for his own plaques, on this wall of fame. Spoiler alert: he’s mightily impressed by himself.

“On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump became the first President in 132 to be sworn into office for a second non-consecutive term, following his Historic Victory in an Electoral College landslide, 312 to 226,” the plaque for his second term reads.

“Overcoming unprecedented Weaponisation of Law Enforcement against him, as well as two assassination attempts, he won all battleground States by millions of votes, was the first Republican in decades to win the Popular Vote, BIG, and won 86 per cent of Counties in America, 2700 to 525.”

I probably should note that the “millions of votes” thing is nonsense. To pick one random “battleground state” out of a hat, Mr Trump won Wisconsin by 30,000 votes.

Mr Trump was indeed the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since Mr Bush in 2004, however. The other candidates during that period were John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Donald Trump.

“At his Inauguration, President Trump announced the beginning of the ‘Golden Age of America’, and he delivered, ending eight wars in eight months, securing the Border, deporting gang members and migrant criminals, making our Cities safe, helping our Farmers, defeating Inflation, reducing Energy costs, and drawing Trillions of Dollars of new Investment, a RECORD, into the United States,” the plaque continues.

It ends with a promise that: “THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

And more White House renos are also, presumably, yet to come.