We beg your pardon, but President Donald Trump did promise us a Rose Garden. Too bad it is a hideous, ugly mess. But now it is a hideous ugly mess … with statues!
Trump arrived back at the White House late Sunday night, having just jetted back from starting an illegal war from the comfort of his resort in Florida, where he threw up some curtains and called it secure. Upon arriving back at the White House, Trump couldn’t really be bothered to answer questions about the United States soldiers killed in Iran, because who cares about that when you have new Founding Fathers statues, right?
Yes, between when Trump left on Friday and arrived home Sunday, some decorator minions made sure to give Trump a little treat when he got back: statues of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson atop the now-paved Rose Garden. And apparently those statues were so top of mind for Trump that it was all he could talk about.
“Trump’s White House redevelopment plan” by David Horsey
CNN’s senior correspondent Kristen Holmes was there and later said that while Trump “usually stops and talks to the press,” this time, “he completely ignored us.” Sure, that makes perfect sense. Wouldn’t want to talk to the press about the major conflagration you just kicked off in the Middle East. Instead, said Holmes, Trump “stopped and admired” his new additions, urging reporters to “Come look at them, they’re unbelievable.” After that, Trump just walked away.
Laser-focused on what matters.
The new statues are just the latest addition to Trump’s ongoing project of turning Washington, D.C. into a monument to himself and his terrible taste. The once bucolic, beautiful, and historic Rose Garden is now a paved-over mess. It’s also a place for Trump to entertain, but only if you are fancy enough to be a member of Trump’s new “Rose Garden Club.”
How do you get in the club? You either need to be a political ally of the president or grease his palms, basically. On reflection, that sounds like a terrible club.
Related | Say goodbye to the Rose Garden at Trump’s White House
This latest desecration of the White House joins all the other gilded nightmares Trump has cursed us with. His love of gold leaf is so boundless that it has oozed all over, breaking free of the Oval Office and running amok outside. He tore down the East Wing so he could build what seems to be just a bigger version of a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, a ballroom he is so enamored of that he had to stop in the middle of a press conference about Iran on Monday to reflect on how “it will be the most beautiful ballroom.”
Again, laser-focused on what matters. We’re two days into what looks like a rapidly devolving conflict in the Middle East, a conflict Trump recklessly started, and it’s nothing but statues and ballrooms.
Perhaps Trump was inspired by Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire buddy who built a Garden of Evil dotted with statues of dictators like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, then-Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, and throwing in Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first commissar of the Soviet secret police, for good measure. According to Crow, this is to “remind newer generations of the failure of the bad guys and the triumph of the good guys.”
Erecting statues of the bad guys does not actually seem like the best way to highlight that good triumphs over evil? It instead just kind of looks like Crow loves him some dictators. Perhaps Trump will have a place of honor there one day.
Let’s face it: We will see a statue of Trump much, much sooner, and it will be in the Rose Garden along with statues of the founders. This is absolute Dear Leader stuff, just like slapping his name on the Kennedy Center or Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bill trying to get Trump on Mount Rushmore.
Trump’s continued desecration of the White House is a small thing compared to his continued destruction everywhere else, but it still stings to watch him wreck the place.
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