Maybe you’ve heard of “trompe l’oeil,” but what about “Trump l’oeil?”
The photorealistic artistic technique is taking center stage at the White House as President Donald Trump continues with his effort to remake the centuries-old presidential residence to his liking, this time with a new project to reshape the iconic front entrance.
Workers on a large scaffold spent hours on Thursday precisely draping a tarp over the executive residence’s north portico in preparation for renovation work, keeping with a longstanding practice of hiding construction at the White House from public view.
But this tarp is no ordinary drop cloth. The massive covering was pre-printed with a shockingly accurate rendering of the very architectural feature it was intended to hide, making it appear to a casual observer as if there were no covering at all.
A White House official told The Independent that the tarp is meant to shield the portico while it undergoes “standard restoration work,” while Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told former DOGE spokeswoman and right-wing podcaster Katie Miller that the project will wrap “very quickly” during an appearance on her eponymous podcast.
“President Trump comes out to greet a world leader, sees door dings in the pillars, and he says, ‘Look at all this stuff that needs to be repaired,’” he said.
“We’re restoring the plaster, and not just at the door level — all the way up to the crowns of those towers,” Burgum continued, adding that the project would be considered “historic renovation work.”
During a media availability earlier this week, Trump said work crews had already “taken about 150 years of paint off of the columns and re-did them” while claiming that they had been “in very bad shape” because they were “treated very badly by a lot of presidents,” though he offered no evidence to support the claims.
Earlier this year, Rodney Cook, the Trump ally who heads the federal arts commission in charge of approving major construction projects in Washington teased the replacement of the simple Doric columns that have fronted the White House for two centuries with ornate Corinthian ones similar to those used at the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court buildings.
The heavily decorated columns would match those that will be used in Trump’s planned ballroom, should it ever be completed.
“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Cook said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”
It’s unclear whether the work on the columns includes replacing the centuries-old Doric tops with Corinthian ones, though such a development would not be the first change Trump has made to the White House without much input from outside authorities.
In October, he ordered the historic East Wing demolished to build a ballroom which critics fear will dwarf the historic White House mansion and West Wing, leaving a gaping hole between the main White House and the Treasury Department building.
The president has also installed a pair of massive flagpoles on either side of the White House grounds, torn up much of the historic Rose Garden and replaced it with a patio reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and is in the process of building a granite helipad on the South Lawn to accommodate next-generation Marine helicopters.
