With his new order, the two rooms “won’t be able to be taken down, destroyed, touched, or anything else.”
Page A229From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 5 November 2026
Trump's answer to what he will miss most about the White House is now an executive order
As it ran on the front
Read the words again before you decide this is a man preserving history: the two rooms "won't be able to be taken down, destroyed, touched, or anything else." That is not decoration. That is a servitude, and a servitude binds whoever holds the keys next, whatever the voters do about it. The Post has the fate of the gilded remodel "up in the air." Quite. The order is signed; the gold waits on somebody else's lawyers.
And in October, asked what he would miss most about the White House, he talked about the office. Not the country. The office.…
…(cont) There is a figure for a chair. McMahon's office told Congress the secretary's furniture is worn out and "cannot be configurationally or aesthetically integrated"; roughly $43,000 is budgeted. Forty-three thousand ... for furniture, because the old furniture cannot be integrated. She had said the relocation would save taxpayers $4.8m a year. She is seeking to shutter the department.
Ashore now, the boatman keeps the rope. No one asks for it yet.
“They tell you there's no money for schools, and then the education secretary's office puts up forty-three grand for furniture because the old stuff can't be "aesthetically integrated." Same month, the boss signs paper saying nobody you elect later can touch his gold rooms. That's the deal: they shut the department, they keep the chairs, and the people's house comes with his taste already bolted down.”
“The order protects a historic room, which is conservation, and I thought you people liked conservation. The furniture is a one-time configuration expense against $4.8 million a year in savings — savings, did I say savings? That doesn't sound like me. Nobody is prying up gold leaf, nobody said permanent, and frankly the fate of the remodel is up in the air.”
The receipts
· Trump says he rejected Secret Service plan to tear down Oval Office from the morgue, 1 Oct 2026
· Education secretary Linda McMahon plans to spend nearly $43,000 on office furniture from the morgue, 28 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.