As part of Donald Trump’s latest Fox News interview, parts of which aired over multiple nights this week, the president told host Laura Ingraham: “I built many ballrooms, and many buildings, and that’s my greatest strength, actually. … I build better than anybody else. Nobody can build like me.”
It was an odd boast for someone who’s supposed to have governing and policymaking skills unrelated to hiring people to construct ballrooms. Indeed, American presidents have an enormous number of responsibilities. If Trump’s “greatest strength” is his ability to approve blueprints and write checks to contractors, he’s in the wrong job.
But as part of the same interview, the Republican also made some news about other elements of his White House renovation ambitions.
Trump on his plans for the EEOB: pic.twitter.com/jaHuoR2r37
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 13, 2025
“Is the Executive Office Building color going to be changed?” Ingraham asked Trump, adding that she’d “heard a rumor” about this. The president proceeded to show her (and viewers) a mockup of a building covered completely in pale white paint.
“You don’t worry that it’s like a big white blob?” the Fox host asked. The president quickly dismissed the possibility. “No, no,” he replied. “What it does is it brings out all the details.”
For those unfamiliar with the White House complex, there’s the structure most people think of when they think of the presidential mansion. It’s bracketed (or at least it was bracketed) by a West Wing and an East Wing, the latter of which was recently destroyed.
Just across from the West Wing, on the other side of a narrow parking lot, is a massive structure that’s called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, or EEOB. (The building has actually gone through several names — I still think of it as the Old Executive Office Building, or OEOB — but Republicans named it after Dwight Eisenhower in 1999.)
This is the building that Trump wants to completely cover in white paint. In fact, he told Ingraham, “I’m getting bids right now from painters.”
So let’s take stock.
Trump had already destroyed the East Wing. And paved the Rose Garden. And added gold finishes to just about everything in the Oval Office. And announced plans for a wildly unnecessary ballroom. And installed a needlessly large flagpole. And ripped apart the Lincoln Bedroom’s bathroom. And uprooted the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. And ripped out historic trees. And installed a ridiculous “Presidential Walk of Fame” on the West Colonnade. And put up a silly Oval Office sign on the wall outside his office.
It’s against this backdrop that he’s also apparently “getting bids right now from painters” to turn the EEOB into, to borrow Ingraham’s phrase, “a big white blob.”
Putting aside concerns about the president’s gaudy tastes and unsettling sense of style, a more pertinent question hangs overhead: Doesn’t this guy have a day job that keeps him busy?
Trump too often seems less like a president and more like someone who has stumbled upon a “Sim City: White House Edition” video game that he just can’t put down.








