The new Sun King

Washington Post

23-04-2025

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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.'
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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.
Dublin's Leinster House inspired James Hoban's design of the first White House. (Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)
In keeping with the modest tone, the White House's earliest inhabitants avoided referring to the building as a 'presidential palace,' describing it instead as the 'executive mansion' or the 'President's House,' the latter of which appears engraved on silver serving objects from the 19th century. It was Theodore Roosevelt who made the informal expression 'the White House' the building's official designation. The U.S. republic's representative democracy, however imperfect and incomplete, has historically been symbolized by a 'house' — not a palace.
This doesn't mean the White House hasn't experienced moments of exuberant ornamentation. Chester A. Arthur added a Gilded Age vibe by installing in the entrance hall a glass screen by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Andrew Jackson adorned the East Room with an exploding aureole of gold stars above a doorway. (Neither of these flourishes survived subsequent renovations.) And there was James Monroe, who had an abiding fondness for French decorative objects, and acquired a surtout de table for the White House — a gilded ornamental centerpiece intended for elegant dinners.
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The surtout remains in the White House's collection to this day. In fact, elements of the centerpiece, namely the gilded bronze baskets held aloft by the Three Graces that were crafted by the 19th-century French firm of Deniére et Matelin, now appear on a table behind Trump's desk and on the mantel of the Oval Office. Some of the other golden objects on the mantel, according to a report by The Post's Jura Koncius, were gifts to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Where exactly the gilded floral wall trim comes from, along with the golden angels that are stuffed into the Oval Office's pediments, is uncertain. The White House did not respond to my query regarding their origin or fabrication, nor did the president respond to Ingraham's question about the source of the angels during her tour (though he did state they 'bring good luck'). Enterprising tech reporter John Keegan of Sherwood News, however, may have tracked down the source of the trim, which bears an uncanny resemblance to decorative pieces sold on Alibaba for $1 to $5 apiece — made in China.
Gold decorations on a fireplace mantel in the Oval Office. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)
Whatever the design evolution of the White House, the president's office has generally been a more low-key affair — principally because an office isn't the place to bust out the glitzy state dinnerware. In 1909, when President William Howard Taft built the first Oval Office, it was designed in the Federal style, which is the form of Georgian neoclassicism favored by the Founding Fathers. An early photograph upon its completion shows a room with almost no decoration — just a wooden desk, green burlap walls and a green carpet. The most prominent adornments are the Grecian-style pediments over the doors. It conveyed authority with no unnecessary flash.
For the most part, U.S. presidents have adhered to the broad contours of the Federal style when decorating the office (though FDR was partial to clutter). But Trump is the only one who seems intent on transforming it into one of those rococo period rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Where previous leaders have featured a small selection of paintings, Trump has stuffed the room with a salon-style hang of canvases that includes an array of U.S. presidents, along with Benjamin Franklin. In between, he has added military flags and ornate, baroque-style mirrors in gilded frames. Modern bronze busts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill sit incongruously on console tables supported by gilded eagles. On the central coffee table rests a stack of bright golden coasters. With each passing news conference, the Oval Office increasingly resembles the highly ornamented Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles — a space that will make you dizzy with decoration.
A portrait of Ronald Reagan and a poster showing the 'Gulf of America' in the Oval Office on Feb. 11. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock) A marker used by President Trump to sign an executive order closing the Education Department was left in the East Room on March 20. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)
President Trump's image is reflected in a mirror as he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)
Trump likes to refer to his presidency as 'a golden age' — a phrase that kicked off his inauguration speech in January and that, as Ben Jacobs of Politico notes, he has since repeated ad nauseam. Among the various merchandise in the Trump online store is a collection called 'Golden Age of America' that includes a giant chocolate bar wrapped in golden foil, a golden serving tray, golden playing cards and a 'gold' headband that looks suspiciously beige. What exactly makes our era golden Trump never explicitly says. (It's certainly not the value of your 401(k).) But the golden age he hearkens to in his office decor is 'Le Grand Siècle' (The Great Century) of the French monarchy under King Louis XIV, a.k.a. the guy who built Versailles.
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For this so-called Sun King, life was golden. For his subjects, not so much. Monarchical power was absolute, with no checks or balances. Dissidents could be dispatched to prison with an order signed by the king, known as a lettre de cachet. These had to be obeyed. If the king sent you off to the Bastille, off you went; there was no due process, no appeal, no explanation. Punishments such as banishment — being deported to another territory — for a limited period or for life, were also a part of French criminal practice.
A bust of Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris. (Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images; iStock) A depiction of France's King Louis XIV known as 'The Sun King' at Versailles. (Ian Langsdon/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)
At Versailles, Louis XIV built for himself an opulent home, but he also created an important symbol. The baroque and the rococo are forms that dwell in spectacle: gilded and mirrored surfaces, ornate floral designs, sumptuous fabrics, and paintings and sculptures imbued with intense drama. Baroque buildings like Versailles were constructed in the service of displaying the glory and the authority of the state. (Versailles, incidentally, was also a bit of a prison: located at a remove from Paris, it isolated Louis XIV's courtiers from the rest of the aristocracy, so they wouldn't get in the way of the king's political plans — which largely consisted of starting wars.)
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The world of King Louis XIV is the world that Trump is building for himself both aesthetically and politically. The White House media apparatus has actively promoted the idea of Trump as a king — even releasing an illustration that shows him wearing a crown. In his Oval Office surroundings, Trump offers aesthetic spectacle. In the way his administration has carried out its deportations, he provides political spectacle: masked ICE agents smashing immigrants out of their cars, a university student cuffed at a citizenship interview, the deportation of hundreds to an inhumane megaprison in El Salvador — no due process, no appeal, no explanation. Trump's gilded gewgaws and our growing authoritarian state are intimately connected. In the United States in 2025, l'etat c'est Trump.
In the presidential memorandum on 'Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,' the Trump administration describes the need to honor the 'traditional' architectural heritage of the United States. But in his taste for the gloss of French kings, Trump does no such thing — instead, he rejects the traditions of the Founding Fathers in favor an aesthetic that connotes absolute rule. If history is a lesson, Trump shouldn't get too comfortable with his royal trappings. After the French Revolution, overwrought styles such as rococo went out of fashion, as the country's monarchs quite literally lost their heads at the hands of the peasantry. And the Hall of Mirrors? It's now a tourist attraction.