His love of gold is well known, so this comes as no surprise.
President Donald Trump has already redecorated the Oval Office at the White House, CNN reported Friday night, and photos show the room’s reddish curtains have been replaced with gold-hued drapes.
Trump also replaced former President Barack Obama’s rug, which was emblazoned with powerful quotes from American history. “They always change the carpet; [Trump] changed the carpet. It’s a sunburst pattern,” CNN’s Erin Burnett noted Friday evening.
Though some reports said “new” rug is from the George W. Bush era, it appears to be Ronald Reagan’s former rug ― one that George W. Bush did use for a short time before he had his own similar sunburst style made.
The gold drapes Trump chose to install were also used briefly by Bush, according to photographs, though Bush replaced them, too, for a slightly different gold pair. Trump’s gold drapes seem to have originated with Bill Clinton:
Among other Trump updates, a bust of Winston Churchill is back in the spot where Obama famously replaced it with a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The turnaround ― such as it is so far ― apparently happened while Trump was being sworn in. As of Friday morning, Obama’s decor, installed in 2010 at the expense of the non-profit White House Historical Association, was still in place:
How much more gold might things get at the White House? Judging from Trump’s personal properties and private plane, one can only guess.
“Everyone now personalizes it,” historian William Seale told the Washington Post of the Oval Office. “They usually don’t change much right away. But then they might change the curtains, and everyone eventually gets a new rug.”
A previous version of this article cited a report describing Trump’s current rug as “Bush-era.” It has been updated to reflect that although George W. Bush used the rug for a time, it originated with Ronald Reagan.