Bigly ornaments and Sassy art take over DC

It started with backhoes ripping into the East Wing. That’s how Americans first felt the pangs of Donald Trump’s intended “makeover” of Washington, DC, last October.

Or maybe it was appending the “TRUMP” name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—a move that has since led to mass cancellations by performing groups and a sudden decision to close the place after this July 4 for “renovations.”

Or possibly it was all the gold that began plastering every surface of the Oval Office, replacing simplicity and quiet dignity with the loud braggadocio of a UFC trophy wall: There were gold urns and vermeil figurines from the White House’s historic collection now propped on the mantel; custom gold drink coasters, a gold-stamped paperweight bearing the TRUMP name, and gold cherubs shipped from his Mar-a-Lago estate. There were gold eagles, gilded doorframes, and gilded ceiling appliques. Gold, gold, gold. The Lincoln Bathroom overlooking the Rose Garden, we learned, was now trimmed in gold, with gold shower fixtures.

There was no reason to think it would ever stop at the White House. Trump looked over the nation’s capital, and saw it as his latest landscaping project. Spare no expense! Get rid of that ugly, dirty, “reflective” gray granite lining the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall and spray-paint it “American flag blue”—at least not “swimming pool blue,” as the computer-generated image Trump posted of himself, JD Vance and other AI slop figures cooling off with drinks in its new, vibrant-blue waters hinted. So much for reflection.

It’s hard to convey how shocking it was for an American to see heavy machinery slicing away at the East Wing. It felt like our country was being gutted. It is called “The People’s House” for a reason—symbolism that, for us, means the president shall forever be a temporary “occupant” of the White House, not a gold-fixated vulgarian hellbent on shaping it into his own costly, tacky image. The arguments that other presidents have “redone” the White House are weak: pointing to Obama installing an outdoor basketball net just ain’t on the same level. Then there is the fact that Trump has casually referred to the White House as a “shit house” that desperately needs his remodeling touch. No, it’s The People’s House, Sir.

Trump’s intended DC makeover, which no one seems able to completely stop or control, includes a planned 250-foot arch that would cast a shadow over the Arlington National Cemetery—a bad omen, for those who read omens. Why an arch? Other big European powers have them, he reasons. Why not me?

Then there’s the blinged-out ballroom, which has become a Fabergé egg of ballooning costs and rationales (Security! Underground bunker!) and things no amount of presidential huffing and puffing can convince the American public are needed at taxpayer expense. It’s just all so Marie Antoinette.

Amid all this monument-flipping reality show drama taking over in Washington, there are some other interior “improvements” going on. Rascally art project The Secret Handshake has been doing some Banksy-like deployments that have popped up, like little thorns in Trump’s cankles, at every turn on the National Mall this second term: first, there was the large sculpted figure of Trump holding hands with Jeffrey Epstein, a gilded piece titled “Best Friends Forever” that comes with a helpful plaque: “In Honor of Friendship Month: We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.”

The Secret Handshake remains a bit secretive, though they’ve been doing such deployments since the first Trump term back in 2017. Now that he’s back, they’ve scaled up: there’s the public art sculpture of Trump embracing Epstein from behind, their arms soaring out like Jack and Rose in Titanic (“I’m king of the world!”), another welcome addition to the DC landscape. It seems no matter how often the National Park Service removes these, um, items of public curiosity from view, the art group manages to install new pieces. Another objet d’art decorating the National Mall was a gold-plated toilet—a nod to Trump’s Midas-like ambitions—while the most recent piece is called “Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell” and includes a trio of video games installed at the DC War Memorial that the public can actually play. The game involves a pixelated Trump avatar you steer around the Oval Office, making him launch missiles at Iran or shred Epstein Files, and features “furious tweet battles, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and the Pope.” Reportedly, the only way you can lose the video game is “by trying to hold Melania’s hand.”