Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, was famous for taking phone calls, and in-person meetings, seated from White House toilets—door open, trousers on the floor and all. So much so, LBJ’s antics, done intentionally to create an awkward environment for those involved, is remembered as the “Johnson treatment.”
Might we call the unchecked renovation and demolition of the White House underway today the Trump treatment?
So far, Trump has emblazoned gold doodads on the walls of the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, paved over the Rose Garden, and knocked down the East Wing to make way for a $300 million ballroom.
Now, President Trump has taken aim at a smaller, more intimate space in the White House: the bathroom that flanks the Lincoln Bedroom, the southeast room on the White House’s second floor.
Last Friday afternoon, on Truth Social, while the government remained shut down, Trump posted photographs of the historic bathroom newly clad with “highly polished, Statuary marble.” The supporting details—shower heads, door knobs, and coat racks—are now gold. (One has to wonder: is the water pressure strong enough?) It is unclear who the architects and contractors were, or how much the changes cost.
The photographs raise questions: Are those marble tiles or proper slabs? What about a shower curtain? Or a hook for the hand held shower wand whose hose seems too short for taller guests? Is there a floor drain? Why didn’t Trump install the Ultraluxe 12 in. Rough-In 1-Piece 1/1.6 GPF Dual Flush Elongated Toilet in Shiny Gold with seat included? And so on.
The renovation swapped out materials from 1945, when President Truman redesigned the green-hued bathroom in an art deco style.
In 2002, then-first lady Laura Bush proposed restoring the Lincoln Bedroom, and its bathroom, along historical lines. But those alterations never materialized. Trump argued that this latest renovation is “totally in keeping” with the original version from the 1860s, but historians contest this, like Michael Bishop, former executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Edward Lengel, chief historian of the White House Historical Association, said: “It doesn’t look anything like 1860s interiors to me.”
John Oliver called the bathroom photographs “tone deaf” amid the government shutdown, when Americans are deprived of SNAP benefits, government employees are going without pay, and shortages are affecting air-traffic controllers and TSA agents at airports nationwide.
Late-Night Laughter
The cast at Saturday Night Live lampooned Trump’s White House renovations this past weekend, in a skit featuring Donald Trump (played by James Austin Johnson), Melania Trump (Chloe Fineman), and Drew and Jonathan Scott (Miles Teller) from The Property Brothers, the HGTV home makeover show.
In the Weekend Update segment, Michael Che took aim at the marble bathroom, saying he was happy that the floor looks “slippery” (AN’s architecture word of the year in 2024). Separate but related, Kenan Thompson jabbed at Hudson Yards.
On Halloween, South Park, in its spooky holiday episode, also took aim at Trump’s demolition of the East Wing. And a costume about the wreckage went viral online.
The Lincoln Bedroom is part of the White House’s private quarters, which means it is not a state or official room, and thereby outside the purview of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. Still, the bathroom’s abrupt renovation, again, rung alarm bells for those keen on seeing the White House remain somewhat intact.
Who Will Say No Now?
Last week, Trump terminated all six Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) members. The terminations came not long after his administration sacked several members of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) so it could install loyalists sympathetic to America First policies.
The CFA was scheduled to review plans for the East Wing ballroom and triumphal arch proposals, both pet projects of President Trump. Former CFA commissioners have since come under attack by far-right media pundits on Newsmax.
Writing in Jacobin, preservation expert Michael Allen recently said the Trump administration’s White House alterations have exposed the limits of liberal preservation advocacy.
Instead of “last-minute press releases and ‘strongly worded’ letters” from the AIA, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and other groups, Allen said, these organizations need to begin mobilizing their members against the president’s plans.
In regard to this latest change, Allen told AN: “The bathroom remodel makes me wonder whether what Trump thinks is his admiration for neoclassicism is actually a love for the most excessive and cartoonish postmodernism of the 1980s.”
Others have remarked how Trump’s mindset—from business dealings to musical taste—were formed during that glitzy decade.
With this latest glow-up now revealed, it leaves us wondering what room Trump will turn his gold-thumbed decorator attention to next.
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