The new Sun King

Donald Trump’s rococo Oval Office decorations are old-fashioned and un-American.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/trump-oval-office-baroque-rococo/

https://archive.ph/jYXd2


With a light fixture in the room reflecting off a teleprompter, President Donald Trump appears in the East Room of the White House in February. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)

When President Donald Trump gave Fox News host Laura Ingraham a tour of the Oval Office last month, he showed off a copy of the Declaration of Independence stashed behind a pair of navy blue curtains, as well as prominently placed portraits of George Washington and Ronald Reagan. The camera panned the room to also reveal a row of gilded vases and baskets on the mantel, golden floral moldings adhered to the fireplace and walls, and golden angels tucked into neoclassical pediments above the doors. Ingraham noted the golden accents, along with the fact that another media organization had said the president wanted to “Trumpify” the Oval Office. Trump responded: “It needed a little life.”

Every U.S. president has adapted the Oval Office to suit his taste. Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed an animal hide rug on the floor. John F. Kennedy, a World War II naval officer, hung seascapes on the walls. And Barack Obama featured indigenous ceramics on the shelves. But Trump has gone golden, taking the office into baroque and rococo realms typical of 17th- and 18th-century French monarchs. An analysis in the Cut called the decoration “An Interior Designer’s Nightmare.” But the sparkle conveys something more insidious about how Trump views himself. Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute — who governs by executive order, and has been recorded giggling in his gilded chamber with Salvadoran autocrat Nayib Bukele as his administration defies a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that he facilitate the return of a Salvadoran immigrant who was wrongly deported. God save us from the king.


President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office on April 14. (Al Drago/For The Washington Post; iStock)


President John F. Kennedy, a Navy veteran, had seascapes in the Oval Office. (AP/WOA; iStock)

The White House decor might seem inconsequential, but its aesthetics were important to the Founding Fathers, who were conscientious about what the decor might telegraph about the nascent republic. George Washington, who presently surveys the Oval Office from his position above the mantel in an 18th-century portrait by Charles Willson Peale, was wary of designs that smacked of royal ostentation — the country, after all, had just extracted itself from a monarchy via a bloody revolution. Before the construction of the White House, Washington inhabited a taxpayer-funded home in Philadelphia where he demanded that any additions and alterations be done in “a plain and neat manner, not by any means in an extravagant style.” As historian Betty C. Monkman writes in “The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families,” Washington “rejected the use of tapestries or rich and costly papers.” I can only imagine what the republic’s first leader would make of the golden paperweight that now sits on the Oval Office coffee table, embossed with Trump’s name in screaming ALL CAPS.


A golden paperweight inscribed with Trump's name in the Oval Office in March. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; iStock)


The FIFA Club World Cup was displayed in the Oval Office. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; iStock)


A New York Post front page featuring the mug shot of President Donald Trump hangs outside the Oval Office. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)

When it came time to choose a design for a presidential residence in the late 18th century, Washington likewise picked one of the more restrained concepts. Conceived by Irish-born architect James Hoban, the White House, as it originally stood, combined the tidy symmetries and boxy practicality of Georgian architecture, a neoclassical style that had been popular in the British Isles during the 18th century. The White House was inspired, in part, by Leinster House in Dublin, which dates to the 1740s and now houses the Irish Parliament — a Georgian structure that is grand in scale but subdued in its surface decoration.

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