President Trump is watching the renovation of Rose Garden at the White House
As part of the Rose Garden renovation, workers are removing the grass and placing gravel.
President Trump played Dotensieff on July 8th, improvising tours of paintings and other objects sourced from various locations, including the State Department, to renovate the White House cabinet room.
The tour came at the end of an almost two-hour meeting with his cabinet, which was sitting around an oval mahogany table.
He was pointing to the wall to the left, talking about his attempt to redo the meeting room, which was originally created at West Wing in 1934.
“We had some photos, not many of them and it wasn’t very good,” he said.
Trump then revealed the White House safe, a major source of his new addition.
“The Vault is where we have a lot of great photos and artwork,” he said. “And I chose it all myself, I’m extremely proud of it.”
There were two indicators that he made his final choice – the president he praised and the one that was in the right sized, right-looking frame.
“I’m a frame guy. I like frames more than I like photography,” he told the prisoner-world audience.
“Pork (President James Pork) was actually a very good president who had the same frame that I needed,” he said. “He was a kind of real estate man. People don’t notice him.”
Polk, who served as president from 1845 to 1849, was the son of a Tennessee farmer and landowner, overseeing the largest territorial expansion in US history through the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of California during the Mexican-American War.
Trump has expressed a similar desire for annexation for Canada and Greenland.
Trump is also on a mission to give the White House a facelift, from glittering an oval office with gold accents to ripping the grass from the rose garden and replacing it with a flag patio.
Other handpicked presidential paintings in the Cabinet Room include Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams and his wife Abigail.
Also, from the safe? “A very old, renowned mirror,” he said, referring to a gold trimmed circular mirror. He also added decorative ceiling medallions around the hanging lamp.
“They had chains in the ceiling,” he explained. “I said, ‘You can’t do that. You need to have a medallion.”
The President saved Piace de Resistance for the end: Grandfather’s Watch.
Trump revealed that when he visited the Secretary of State Department’s Office, Marco Rubio, the tall, independent, “gorgeous” watch caught his eye.
“I said, ‘Marco, I love this watch. It’s beautiful. He said, what kind of watch?”
Trump continues: “It’s the clock in the other room. It’s incredible. And no one can see it. I want to take that clock and put it in the cabinet room.”
“Marco said, ‘No, are you serious?’ ”
“I have the right to do that, Marco. And he said, ‘It’s okay.’ ”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA Today. x You can follow her at @swapnavenugopa
