08/10/2026
Hillary Clinton says Trump's Oval Office looks like Saddam Hussein's palace. She's been in both. "When I was in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I had meetings. I was then a senator. I had meetings in some of his palaces, and they were quite reminiscent of what we are seeing in our own White House. It's just insane."
Trump has spent his second term covering the Oval Office in gold. Gold moldings. Gold trim on the doors and bookcases. Photographs taken a month apart this summer show fresh gilding appearing above the fireplace between one foreign leader's visit and the next.
"It's sad that it's so tackied up," Clinton said. "It's a reflection of, you know, his narcissistic personality and his need to feel important, including sticking gold embellishments all over the walls of the Oval Office."
"This is a man who, his mind apparently goes to, 'Where can I add more gold?' instead of, 'How do I get out of Iran without looking like the loser that I am?'"
She is not opposed to presidents changing the house. She oversaw a restoration of the Blue Room herself when she lived there.
"I'm not against the idea of a ballroom," she said. "I'm against this ballroom. I'm against the process that, well, the fact there was no process that created this, you know, carbuncle on the side of the White House."
She has been blunter in public. Writing about the renovations earlier this year, she needed four words. "It's not his house."
Beyond the gold, Trump has installed a "Presidential Walk of Fame" along the Rose Garden colonnade, with plaques taking shots at previous presidents. His press secretary confirmed he wrote them himself. He has also proposed a 250-foot triumphal arch across the Potomac.
Clinton never used the word dictator. She just described rooms she has stood in.
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