Extreme Home Makeover: White House Edition

The Atlantic

7 hours ago

A limousine makes its way down Pennsylvania Avenue.
J. D. Vance: I'm here in place of erstwhile host Ty Pennington to surprise a really deserving family with a total home makeover!
The limousine pulls up at the White House.
Vance: Incredible news: The family is the Trump family! Donald, the patriarch, is the monarch of what he hopes will soon be a small, backwater nation after he applies a combination of tariffs and mass deportations to its once-thriving economy. He's hoping to completely redo his house so that one day, he can pass it down to his kids!
Muffled voice off-camera: This house is the people's house.
The camera is handed to somebody else and the speaker gets dragged away.
Donald Trump: I'm so glad you came to give us this makeover, J.D.!
Vance: Well, no one could be more deserving, Mr. President. This is why people are always giving you planes: because they know you deserve nice things. And the American people will pay whatever it takes!
Trump: That's what being president means.
Vance: Yes, sir.
Trump: As I am constantly saying, this is a yucky house that is almost too old to be safe to live in anymore, full of flies and pictures of men who aren't Donald Trump—the two worst things a self-respecting man can have in his house. Also, it is in Washington, D.C., a horrible place. Did you know it is actually where they filmed Mad Max, which is a documentary?
Vance: I didn't know that, but not because I doubt that it's true!
Exterior shot of the White House
Narrator: This old building, called the 'White House,' needs work! It's been a temporary residence for generations of men, including but not limited to Millard Fillmore. William Henry Harrison took one look at it and decided death was preferable. James Madison presided over some free demolition work that was paid for entirely by Britain. One president had an aide named Reince Priebus whose entire function was to shoo away the house's flies.
Before now, any changes were temporary in nature. Residents could transform the house into a haunted blood forest, but only for a season. They could move Winston Churchill's bust and set off a days-long alarm at Fox News headquarters. But fundamentally, the building was the same—full of flies, despite the best efforts of Reince Priebus. Most of its inhabitants have stayed for just four or a maximum of 12 years. There's something about this place that gets most people to leave, and Donald Trump is determined to change whatever that is.
New muffled voice: It's called elections.
Again the speaker is dragged away.
Trump walks through the house with a flashlight and night-vision goggles. The MAHA team leads the way.
Trump: First, we go through with spirit hunters to check for ghost. This team is expert in 'ghost energies,' which is why we are so excited to put it in charge of medical for the whole country.
Dr. Casey Means: I'm sensing some very bad energy coming from this place.
Trump taps wall. A faint voice can be heard.
Trump: That is Steve Bannon. He is podcasting all the time from inside the walls.
He opens wainscoting to reveal Steve Bannon.
Trump: Hello, Steve! Good luck with your presidential run!
He shuts the wainscoting. Long pause while everyone fumbles for the light switches. Eventually, they find them.
Trump: Now we tackle the ivy!
Cut to the Oval Office.
Trump: I have a lot of notes for the design team here. Not enough pictures, and also the wrong pictures. We can see some wall, which is bad. Melania said, 'Make it a scary forest.' But I think other parts of the house can be a scary forest. This I want to be all gold! I keep saying, 'Who is that guy who touches things and they become gold?' He was Greek, I think. Get that guy on staff and then put him up on a ladder and have him touch all the fixtures. Then offer him a sandwich and say, 'Ha, ha, you can't eat it!' Ha ha ha!
Interior decorator: Donald's notes were so specific. We want people to say, 'Am I in a King Midas fever dream?' If a leopard on a gold leash were to walk by, would it look out of place?
Susie Wiles walks a leopard through the Oval Office and Trump shakes his head, mouthing 'More.'
Interior decorator: Could we film a music video here? Would a pope feel at home?
Trump: If you kidnap the pope and you fly him here and you make him open his eyes and he feels at home, that's a good sign.
Interior decorator: Most of our budget is going toward kidnapping the pope.
Trump: Not the Chicago pope. A regular pope with standards.
An aide can be overheard on the phone saying, 'No, it's fine. J. D. Vance won't be there. We have double-checked his schedule. He's 'taking his family to dump out Lake Mead.''
Interior decorator: Here we see the Oval Office as it looked before: blue carpet, gold curtains, the ivy over the mantelpiece, the Resolute Desk. And now we see the revised design.
Interior decorator holds up a photograph of Versailles. Trump shakes his head.
Trump: Not enough. Have Smaug come in. Get the dragon Smaug to loan items from his hoard.
Interior decorator frenziedly scribbles notes.
Narrator: One of the jewels of the White House is the Rose Garden, which was planted by first lady Jackie Kennedy—
The narration is drowned out by the sound of jackhammers as a construction team comes in to tear up the Rose Garden and replace it with a stone patio.
Trump: Better. But it needs tables and little umbrellas that look bad, like you are at an Au Bon Pain. I want the White House to be disorienting for visitors, like Vegas. They should say, 'Where am I? What time is it? Is that a Roman emperor? Why is there an Au Bon Pain here?' And when they leave, they should have less money than when they arrived.
Susie Wiles walks back through with the leopard. She is having difficulty getting the leopard to cooperate. Trump waves cheerily.
Trump: He's looking more at home now. Next move: a big ballroom! The way things are set up now, sometimes you have to attend an event in a tent. That is torture! Tents are for the people I'm placing in internment camps for no reason.
He points at a drawing. It is scrawled in thick black Sharpie and shows chandeliers and tables. Noticing the camera on it, Trump hastily tears it up and eats it.
Sound of a leopard devouring something.