In 2017, I was really concerned that Donald Trump was going to destroy Michelle Obama’s White House vegetable gardens out of spite. Remember that? He made some noise about it, but reportedly, Melania Trump stopped him, and Mel even did a couple of photo-ops in Michelle’s veggie gardens too. While Melania didn’t touch Michelle’s gardens, Melania redid the White House Rose Garden, which was originally planned out by Jackie Kennedy. Jackie wanted the rose garden to be bright and colorful, and while there were minor edits by other First Ladies, Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden stayed put until the first Trump administration. That’s when Melania made it into a sad “White Power” garden, taking out all of the colorful blooms and replacing everything with all-white flowers. Melania also ripped out the crab-apple and cherry trees. It was disgusting. Well, it’s about to get even worse – Donald Trump plans to rip out Melania’s white-power garden and pave the whole thing.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he plans to pave over the White House Rose Garden because “grass, it just doesn’t work.” Trump talked about the changes during an interview with Fox News that aired Wednesday night.
Trump and Fox News host Laura Ingraham walked the grounds of the White House, and then he showed off changes in the Oval Office, including the addition of diminutive gold cherubs.
He said the Rose Garden is “supposed to have events — every event you have, it’s soaking wet, it’s soaking wet, and people can’t, and the women with the high heels, it just didn’t work. And we have a gorgeous stone and everything else, but, you know, we use it for press conferences, and it doesn’t work, because the people fall into the wet [grass]. The roses stay, no, it’s the Rose Garden, all of this stays. It’s just the center section.”
Trump personally reviewed the plans for the Rose Garden recently with White House curators.
Last weekend, CNN reported that Trump plans to transform the garden into a patio-style seating area, much like the one at Mar-a-Lago, his private estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
Patio-style seating? That makes no sense for the Rose Garden, which is directly adjacent to the Oval Office and the breezeway. That’s where outdoor press conferences and signing ceremonies are held. That’s also where they do some of the WH Easter festivities too, right? Between this and Trump putting gold-plated sh-t everywhere in the White House, this is all just tacky as hell. Granted, there are much bigger concerns and we’re talking about literal fascism here. But I’m just offended in general that they’re turning the White House Rose Garden into a place where Trump can slump in a deck chair and sip a Coke. Also: there are already patios and private balconies in the White House!
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.
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- Washington, DC – United States President Donald J. Trump pardons the National Thanksgiving Turkey in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC. First lady Melania Trump looks on at right. Pictured: Donald J. Trump, Melania Trump BACKGRID USA 26 NOVEMBER 2019 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC – United States President Donald J. Trump, joined by First Lady Melania Trump, pardons Corn, the National Thanksgiving Turkey, during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House. Pictured: United States President Donald J. Trump BACKGRID USA 24 NOVEMBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC – United States President Donald J. Trump, joined by First Lady Melania Trump, pardons Corn, the National Thanksgiving Turkey, during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House. Pictured: United States President Donald J. Trump BACKGRID USA 24 NOVEMBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- United States President Donald J Trump makes remarks on the aircraft crash at Reagan National Airport in the briefing room of the White House Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: CNP/INSTARimages
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- President Donald Trump departs White House headed out on a weekend trip to Florida Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 31 Jan 2025 Credit: CNP/INSTARimages
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- President Donald Trump during his meeting with Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the Oval Office of the White House Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 13 Mar 2025 Credit: Yuri Gripas/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- President Donald Trump during his meeting with Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the Oval Office of the White House Featuring: President Donald Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 13 Mar 2025 Credit: Yuri Gripas/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
I wish this was our biggest problem of this administration.
Yep. I hate him for doing this but it’s so low on the things I hate him for at this point.
Me too.
He’s trying to erase the Kennedys. Taking over the Kennedy Center, destroying the Rose Garden. He’s also trying to change the color scheme of Air Force One that Jackie chose.
He can’t erase his legacy no matter how hard he tries.
Speaking of legacies, it continues to shock me that nobody in Trump’s orbit cares about how history will remember them. And I’m not talking about Miller or Patel or whatever–those guys definitely want to be remembered as the first Nazis in the White House. But Congressional Republicans seem to have no issue with being remembered as the cowards who sat idly by as American democracy was decimated and replaced by a fascist, authoritarian regime.
Well, they are assuming they will win and be forever remembered as the ones that saved the nation from degeneracy. Others make the opposite assumption. Who knows.
It’s all so strange to me that he’s aiming at JFK directly. I understand that he’s angry that Caroline and little Jack Jack opposed his candidacy, but why JFK and Jackie particularly? He’s not going to stop until he rips out the Eternal Flame at Arlington.
I suspect it dates back to some point when Jackie was alive and he probably tried to connect with her in NY society and got firmly rejected and excluded – or made advances that were most certainly rejected.
🎯 He’s trying to co-op them. Viz: adopting RFK Jr.
Watch that fucker paint the White House gold.
I ROTFALOL at this heading and remembered the song “they paved paradise to put up a packing lot”. Trump and his minions are shameless.
Move the press conference area or people can learn to dress appropriately for the environment.
Exactly. But that would be too simple a solution with someone with, obviously, not enough to do with his time and who has control of the nation’s money. Spend, spend, spend!
The rule is that we can’t have nice things anymore, Kaiser, and that includes pretty flowers. Throw them through the woodchipper.
Also, is Melania still alive? I feel like the South African billionaire is now providing full time companionship for Trump and Melania is emotionally divorced from this guy. I see Musk’s kid more than I do Barron.
These maniacs have formed their own demented family and I have a feeling Ivanka is happy to not be a part of this shit show anymore. (And of course, eff her too).
Hopefully Melania won’t “fall down the stairs” like wife #1
LOL will she get buried in an overgrown grave on the golf course too?
This talk of paving over the rose garden is giving me body under the patio vibes from Brookside back in the day for UK readers!
As with so many other, *really* important, vital things — Felon47’s maladministration breaks something and it will take decades to heal. Even if the old plans drawn up by landscape architects are retrieved and mature plants and trees replanted.
Of course they will pave over the Rose Garden.
This is the same felon who, after all, said he’d cut the trees down in various National Parks. In those that have resources in them that can be mined, like metals or rare earths. Environment be damned. Climate catastrophe? He doesn’t care, as long as his buddies get even richer.
This is the same guy who gutted the NOAA, who’s closed the lab on Mauna Loa that’s been continuously measuring the CO2 contents of the atmosphere.
A Canadian colleague just told me they call MAGA over there — Make America Go Away. Not the US, but this admin.
I was going to say its a one time thing a president of his style then i remembered this is his second go round. I just hope when the next admin get in they make the guardrails more robust so things are not easily dismantled
“The next administration” that’s adorable.
Wishful thinking or naivety? What do you think?
Maybe a little of both?
I’ve said this before around here but I think there’s a lot of denial among Americans about where our country is actually going. It might take less than two months to gut our government agencies but it will quite literally take decades to rebuild them. Americans are used to a new POTUS coming into what is essentially a “turnkey” situation where the new President reverses previous EOs, stacks the cabinet with their people, and begins to move the country in their chosen ideological direction. That’s not happening again in our lifetimes because you can’t “re-direct” a dismantled government. You can’t just open the door again to proven allies after you’ve shut the door in their face for the sake of creating a New World Order. You can’t magically reverse the environmental destruction that will occur over the next four years as we abandon clean, green energy in favor of fossil fuels. You can’t just simply rebuild dismantled institutions that have been integral to American democracy since the country’s birth. When these things are gone, they’re gone.
Americans really struggle to understand the long-term impacts of this guy’s actions and what it actually means for the future of our country. A new POTUS cannot just un-ring that bell–this is damage that cannot be undone with the stroke of a pen.
And that’s *if* (BIG IF) we’re lucky enough to get this guy out of the Oval.
When Trump refers to himself as a King–believe him
As always Kitten, I agree with you. I think people have their heads in the sand because it’s easier to just be in denial. I am freaking terrified for this Country and I’m sick of being told I’m just paranoid. I’m also terrified personally. My boys are 19 and 17 and I fear they will be drafted and forced to fight for Russia against Ukraine. So yes, getting them out of this dystopian nightmare is very high on my list. I’m not going anywhere. I’m ready and willing to fight this. But I have to protect them in any way I can. There is a “both” option for some of us.
@ Juls-Yes I’m subscribed to Ken Klippenstein’s substack and every day he has a new article detailing the escalation in Iran. It’s weird that none of the major American news outlets are really covering this…Times of India and Al Jazeera are.
And I understand the need to protect your boys because this is a terrifying time. I do think the denial among Americans is born partly out of both self-preservation and an inability to truly conceive of an America that is completely unrecognizable; completely unfathomable. I can completely relate to that. There’s a level of inner peace that comes with willful ignorance and insulating oneself from the horrors of our reality.
@Lili: It’s not that we don’t echo your sentiment, but the “next president” whoever that unicorn may be, requires the votes from both chambers of Congress. The president (whether T**p believes it or not) can’t make certain changes unilaterally. And, since the Supreme Court has essentially said that “anything goes” if a president does it, we just don’t know. There will be chaos, one way or another.
Trump is not going away. A campaign promise,if you vote for me I’ll fix it so you never have to vote again. Also, I’m paraphrasing here, when walking into the oval office this time around,he told press corps he liked it so much he wasn’t going to leave. The only way he’ll leave the presidency is feet first. Age will get him.
Part 2
We need fighters, not criers. No wonder MAGA thinks the left is impotent and weak. “We are doomed! I should leave the country! There’s no hope left! Things will never change!”
I mean, what he did with seizing $80M from NY’s bank account….you can just see him paving the way to eventually seize bank accounts and assets from this political enemies. So he starts with IDK…judges he doesn’t like or some CNN talking head or a Dem politician and eventually moves to protestors then private citizens who say something mean about him. No due process, no checks and balances, nobody to stop him because our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are in his pocket.
And at that point, I do expect people to begin fleeing the country in droves and who could blame them?
And before you call me crazy remember that dictators do shit like this all. the. time.– and Trump IS a dictator.
I hope the courts hold but man oh man are they gonna be tested as our last line of defense against this psychopath.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/how-dictators-use-financial-repression-against-their-opponents/
@Carrie, We also need people who understand the very real potential consequences of being “fighters”. As @Kitten notes, most of us live very electronic lives, so it would only take a second to freeze bank accounts, investment accounts, and even phones. Everything connected to the internet — from cars to credit cards is potentially vulnerable.
It’s both funny and not that I’ve recently read lots of online queries wondering where the Obamas and Harris are — with expectations that they will magically Do Something. “Where are the Democrats?” such people wail. Well, we told y’all BEFORE the last election what was coming, and some of us have no need to be on the front lines as protectors and guinea pigs for people who value us most as merely fodder.
@ Blithe- I don’t get that either. Obama, Kamala, Biden are all private citizens now–they don’t owe us jackshit. Also, people tend to forget and/or minimize the threats that Trump has made against these folks. He’s made it crystal clear that he will do anything and everything in his power to punish and hurt them.
I’d be laying low too if I were them trying to protect my family and avoiding Trump’s target as much as possible.
Is this his mini Red Square? What next, onion domes on the White House?
JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, has been mightily trolling Mango on social media regarding 🍊🤡’s efforts to dismantle JFK’s legacy. It’s a beautiful thing.
I’m reminded of those old song lyrics “ Pave paradise, put up a parking lot”
But does it have to be paved over? Couldn’t one just move the flowers out of the way with a Sharpie? Where is DOGE with this cost efficient solution? The rake the forests to prevent fires crew did not think of this? That surprises me.
@Kitten is correct. He has no intention of ever leaving. I think our only hope is that things will get so bad and obvious to all that Putin is his Daddy that the military will have to yank him out by his double chinny chin chin!!
He would probably have to fire a nuclear missile at a country that doesn’t pose a direct threat to the US for anyone to stand up to him. But by then it would be too late.
What a fabulous investment trump has been for Russia. I think trump will go when Putin decides trump has served his purpose and is more trouble than he’s worth. And that some one else – Vance? – is a longer- term benefit.
When he bought the DC golf course in Sterling VA his first term, he immediately chopped down mature trees along the river that prevented erosion. We used to live there and were biking along the trail and horrified to see this huge empty space with big stumps. Of course, he did all that without a permit, which never would have been approved that close to the river bank. And that’s just one unethical, slightly illegal, thing he’s done there. He is the neighbor from hell.
So, yeah, the Rose Garden will be paved over.
He doesn’t like grass because it’s hard for him to walk on it. He does that weird leg-dragging thing when he’s tired and can barely make it up a few stairs. This is to make it easier for him because he intends to stay there forever.