From flag poles to a $200 million ballroom: Inside Trump's ‘legacy project' at the White House

CNN

a day ago

President Donald Trump held plenty of meetings at the White House this summer: with foreign delegations striking trade deals, Cabinet members plotting a government overhaul and industry executives seeking tariff relief.
But amid the various audiences, he's also found time for discussions of a different purpose.
In recent weeks, Trump has gathered officials with varying responsibilities on the White House campus — including from the National Park Service, the White House Military Office and the Secret Service — to talk over his ideas for transforming the building and its grounds to his liking.
His specifications have been exacting, including finishes that closely resemble his gold-trimmed private clubs — or, in some cases, have been shipped directly from Mar-a-Lago.
His ambitions extend well beyond a temporary cosmetic makeover.
'It'll be a great legacy project,' he said Thursday of his plans to construct a 90,000-square-foot ballroom off the East Wing of the mansion. 'And I think it'll be special.'
No president in recent memory has put his physical imprint on the executive mansion or its plot of land as much as Trump has done this year. Barely six months after reentering office, his aspirations to dramatically alter the White House have now entered an advanced stage.
Two large flagpoles now tower over the North and South Lawns, their massive stars-and-stripes visible even to passengers landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport five miles away. Trump personally dictated the poles' galvanized steel, tapered design and interior ropes, and oversaw their installation in June.
The Rose Garden has been stripped of its grass and paved over with stone, an attempt to replicate the patio at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump dines al fresco during his weekends away from Washington. The president made frequent check-ins this summer with the orange-shirted workers tearing out the grass and reinforcing the ground underneath, at one point inviting them into the Oval Office for a photo. Presidential seals have been embedded into the stone, and the drainage grates are styled like American flags.
The Oval Office itself is adorned with lashings of gold decoration, which Trump ordered up from a craftsman in Florida who'd worked on his Palm Beach estate, people familiar with the matter said. Tiny gold cherubs looking down from above the doorways came straight from Mar-a-Lago.
And soon, construction will begin on the new ballroom, whose footprint will amount to the first major extension of the White House in decades. Trump said he, along with other private donors, will foot the $200 million bill. (He also has said he paid for the flag poles and funded the Rose Garden renovations through private donations, without disclosing the price tag of either.)
'President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail,' White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a statement this week. 'The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House.'
Renderings provided by the White House depict a vast space with gold and crystal chandeliers, gilded Corinthian columns, a coffered ceiling with gold inlays, gold floor lamps and a checkered marble floor. Three walls of arched windows look out over the White House's south grounds.
The gold-and-white style closely mimics the Louis XIV-style main event room at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has not shied away from drawing comparisons to his clubs.
'No president knew how to build a ballroom,' Trump said last weekend, meeting the European Commission president in another of his crystal-draped ballrooms, this one at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland. 'I could take this one, drop it right down there, and it would be beautiful.'
Trump's impulse to make his own improvements is animated by several factors, he and his aides say.
One is a builder's instinct, cultivated over decades in real estate and never quite extinguished when he entered politics a decade ago.
'I love construction,' Trump told reporters as he was watching his new flagpoles going up in June. 'I know it better than anybody.'
Another is Trump's genuine belief that aspects of the White House can be improved, even as he voices reverence for the building itself.
'It won't interfere with the current building,' he said of the new ballroom this week, which the White House says will triple the amount of indoor ballroom space and eliminate the need for temporary tents to host state dinners. 'It'll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of. It's my favorite place.'
The alternative, he said, was an unpleasant solution that he said didn't match the dignity of a state affair.
'When it rains, it's a disaster,' he said. 'People slopping down to the tent — it's not a pretty sight, the women with their lovely evening gowns, all of their hair all done, and they're a mess by the time they get (there).'
Trump said last week that a new ballroom had long been an aspiration of his predecessors. But officials in previous administrations said the concept never arose.
'We never had the desire nor did I ever hear or participate in a conversation to build a ballroom on the White House lawn. We were focused on issues that actually affected people and communities,' said Deesha Dyer — who, as social secretary in President Barack Obama's administration, was responsible for organizing major events like state dinners.
The vision of a new White House ballroom has been floating in Trump's mind dating back at least to 2010, when he called Obama's White House proposing to build one. Officials at the time weren't quite sure what to make of the offer.
'I'm not sure that it would be appropriate to have a shiny gold Trump sign on any part of the White House,' then-press secretary Josh Earnest, who confirmed the offer, said in 2015.
Trump, however, was serious about it and seemed affronted to be turned down.
'It was going to cost about $100 million,' Trump said during his first term. 'I offered to do it, and I never heard back.'
By the time he was in office for his first term, Trump has said he was too consumed with defending himself from his perceived enemies to get it done.
'I had to focus,' he said earlier this year. 'I was the hunted. And now I'm the hunter. There's a big difference.'
Now in his second term, Trump says he is unencumbered by naysayers questioning his design ambitions. And he has forged ahead with the most extensive reshaping of the executive mansion in decades, dictated mainly by his own tastes.
While his cosmetic changes to the Oval Office will likely go with him when he departs in 2029, the other changes he's made could be more lasting. Removing the flagpoles could risk appearing unpatriotic. Tearing out the Rose Garden pavers would be costly. And once a nearly quarter-billion-dollar, 650-person ballroom is built, it's unlikely to be torn down.
'People's tastes differ. I will say this about presidential changes: Some are long-lasting and embraced by the American people. And some just disappear,' said Tim Naftali, a presidential historian at Columbia University.
He cited Theodore Roosevelt's addition of mounted moose and elk heads in the State Dining Room as a detail that didn't withstand time.
'What President Trump does inside the Trump ballroom may not survive the Trump presidency,' Naftali said. 'As long as the bones of the structure are good, future presidents will be able to redesign that space as they see fit.'
In Trump's own telling, the additions will contribute to his legacy — akin to the Truman Balcony the 33rd president added to the second floor of the building, or the Lincoln Bedroom the 16th president used as an office.
Nearly every president has put his own mark on the building, either through individual fancies or practical necessity, going all the way back to its construction in 1792.
'The White House has been shaped by the visions and priorities of its occupants, from Jefferson's colonnades to Truman's monumental gutting,' wrote White House Historical Foundation President Stewart McLaurin in a recent essay. 'Each change, whether Jackson's North Portico, Arthur's opulent redecoration, or Clinton's security measures—has sparked debate, reflecting tensions between preservation and modernization, aesthetics and functionality, and openness and security.'
McLaurin said often, in time, the changes have come to be accepted by the public.
'Media and Congressional criticisms have often focused on costs, historical integrity, and timing, yet many of these alterations have become integral to the identity of the White House, and it is difficult for us to imagine The White House today without these evolutions and additions,' he wrote.
For Trump, making the additions integral to the White House's identity is part of the plan. He has raised questions about the renovations even in meetings ostensibly meant for other purposes.
'Who would gold-leaf it?' he asked members of his Cabinet in early July, gesturing to ceiling moldings in the West Wing. 'Could you raise your hands?'
One member of his Cabinet, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., offered a several-minute aside during the start of a speech this week to praise the president's updates.
'I've been coming to this building for 65 years and I have to say that it has never looked better,' said Kennedy, the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline.
Like Trump, Jackie Kennedy took intense interest in improving the White House. She undertook an extensive redecoration of the State Floor, including procuring antiques and paintings from wealthy philanthropists to improve the building's grandeur. Much of her designs remain in place today.
She also oversaw a redesign of the Rose Garden with the help of heiress and famed horticulturalist Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon, turning the space into a grassy and floral respite from the Oval Office nearby.
Now, the grass is mostly gone. Trump, who had voiced concern about women's high heels sinking into the soil during events, selected light-colored square pavers to replace the lawn.
'It's always extraordinary to go into that sacred space, but I have to say that it looked kind of drab in the pictures,' Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of looking back on old family photos of the Oval Office during his uncle's era. 'It looks the opposite of drab today.'