Trump Keeps Skipping Work to Show Off Ugly White House Renovations

Donald Trump has reportedly become consumed by his large-scale remodeling at the White House, wandering away from his presidential duties to survey renovations.  

The president has repeatedly derailed visits from foreign dignitaries to give lengthy tours of his new digs, Axios reported Wednesday. Following a joint press conference two weeks ago to tout his tenuous peace plan between Israel and Hamas, Trump led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a 40-minute walk-through of his latest renovations. And Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb was given a similar tour last week. 

Trump also interrupted a meeting with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month to show off his sound system being installed outside. 

In September, GOP lawmakers from Florida were trapped with the president for well over an hour as he showed off the new marble tiles he’d selected for the floors in the washroom of the Lincoln Bedroom—where DOGE czar Elon Musk once stayed at Trump’s behest. Trump led the lawmakers through the iconic Rose Garden, which he had partially paved over with stones, and asked them for their opinions. “He asked me to pick a tile,” one lawmaker told Axios.

One Trump adviser proudly admitted that the president raised exterior decorations with everyone who passed through his office. “He asks everyone for a vote on everything,” the adviser told Axios. “We vote. Anybody that walks through gets a vote. He cares so deeply about perfection that this is what he does.”

Trump’s changes have been extensive. First it was filling the Oval Office, which was refitted with ornate crown molding and gaudy golden decor, including a golden Trump crest above the door and golden cherub statues straight from Mar-a-Lago. The president also added a copy of the Declaration of Independence, though later revealed he had no idea what it said. 

Then it was the massive $200 million ballroom that looks like it will dwarf the White House; the demolished Rose Garden, where Trump will host MAGA elites; and the infamous autopen photograph Trump used to replace a portrait of former President Joe Biden. Now it seems the president has turned his attention to an “Arc de Trump” monument. 

One White House aide said the sweeping renovations were Trump’s “artistic outlet.”

“President [George W.] Bush liked to paint. Trump likes to build and design,” they said. 

While Trump explores his creative side, his White House has directed hundreds of federal workers to be fired amid an ongoing government shutdown with no end in sight. Meanwhile, federal forces are waging war on Democratic cities, and immigration authorities are scouring the land for undocumented immigrants to rip out of their communities. 

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its mass firing of federal workers during the government shutdown.

This Wednesday ruling comes on day 15 of the shutdown, as thousands of federal workers have already been fired and thousands more remain on edge. The district judge in San Francisco said the mass firings appear to be politically motivated.

“I am inclined to grant the plaintiff’s motion,” said Illston during a hearing on the matter. “The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning to assume that all bets are off—that the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like. And I find, I believe, that the plaintiffs will demonstrate, ultimately, that what’s being done here is both illegal, and is in excess of authority, and is arbitrary and capricious.”

The case was brought forth by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represent a combined 800,000 federal workers.

This story has been updated.

One day after Donald Trump celebrated a multibillion-dollar bailout for Argentina, his administration moved to double the ante.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the Treasury building Wednesday that the United States is “working on a $20 billion facility that would be adjacent” to the $20 billion credit swap line Trump already approved, totaling $40 billion in assistance for the economically fragile South American country.

“Many banks are interested in it, and many sovereign funds,” Bessent said. “It is a private-sector solution to Argentina’s upcoming debt payments.”

The aid is intended to salvage Argentina’s collapsing economy ahead of the country’s October 26 midterm elections. That vote will determine if Argentine President Javier Milei, one of Trump’s international allies, will maintain the ability to pursue his dramatic cost-cutting agenda.

But there’s another notable beneficiary of the Trump admin’s Argentina bailout package: major hedge funds led by Bessent’s friends. Several major investment funds, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco, stand to significantly gain from the aid transfer, as do several independent investors with ties to Bessent, The New York Times reported earlier this month.

Bessent described the exchange Wednesday as an “economic Monroe Doctrine,” referring to the 1823 policy that rejected European intervention and colonialism in the Western hemisphere.

“Much better to use the heft of the U.S. economic power rather than have to use military power,” Bessent continued, comparing the situation to the supposed “narco traffic coming out of Venezuela.”

But the White House’s planned Argentina bailout is remarkably hypocritical for an administration that has axed critical executive agencies under the auspice of slashing spending.

Stateside, the government is still shut down over how to fund Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included cuts of billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid—a shutdown that Bessent himself claimed Wednesday was costing America “$15 billion a day.”

And the U.S. will likely need a bailout of its own very soon. American soybean farmers have been pummeled by Trump’s tariff policies, which have ripped the Chinese market from their grasp. However, after it came to light that Argentina had replaced the U.S. as China’s top soybean supplier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the anticipated Argentina-bound cash infusion had morphed into a “credit swap line.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that harassment, assault, and stolen valor allegations against Republican Representative Cory Mills are not “serious” matters of discussion at a Wednesday press conference.

A Florida judge on Tuesday issued a restraining order against Mills, after his ex-girlfriend alleged that he had threatened to blackmail her using sexually explicit images of her and to commit violence against her future romantic partners.

Johnson bristled at reporters after being asked twice about the matter.

Responding to a question from NBC News’s Melanie Zanona, Johnson initially claimed to have “not heard or looked into the details of that.”

NOTUS’s Reese Gorman followed up, noting additional scandals—two out of a bevy of others—that Mills has faced, i.e., a different woman once accused him of assaulting her at his apartment, which she since recanted, and Mills, an Army veteran, has also been accused of stolen valor, including by military veterans who served alongside him.

“Are you concerned about these allegations?” Gorman asked. Johnson told him to ask Mills, whom he called “a faithful colleague,” before pleading ignorance of the allegations.

“Let’s talk about things that are really serious,” said the speaker, growing cross, before taking another question.

Federal agents arrested a Portland mother who was playing the “Ghostbusters” theme song on her clarinet at a protest outside an ICE facility.

Oriana Korol, 38, is a member of the Unpresidented Brass Band, which calls itself a “social action oriented, horn driven marching band,” and seeks to deescalate protest tensions. In a video of her arrest from Sunday, a federal agent can be seen violently dragging Korol to the ground, as two more agents come to his aid and her clarinet falls out of her hands.

She has been in Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Washington, since, and is still being held without bail.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running, and then a federal officer running after them. By the time I turned around, this person had been tackled to the ground, and there was an officer on top of them,” said Mike Thompson, Korol’s bandleader. “This was happening right at Oriana’s feet. And she was kind of, they were kind of pinned against a fence,” he said.

Korol’s husband didn’t know she’d been transported across state lines until 2 a.m. the next morning.

“It is a beautiful party atmosphere. Everybody’s really excited. Then the band hits into ‘Ghostbusters,’ and then at ‘Ghostbusters,’ that’s when ICE start storming in,” Korol’s husband told KOIN 6. “Why are they targeting a clarinet player? A clarinet player standing on the sidewalk far away from the street, following instructions.

“We’re not seeing her. We don’t know when we’re going to see her again,” he added, referring to himself and their 3-year-old child.

This arrest is yet another example of the excessive, indiscriminate, and in some instances unlawful actions that the federal agents who’ve flooded American cities in the past few months have taken. On Tuesday, federal agents in Chicago violated a freshly minted temporary restraining order banning them from tear-gassing civilians, also gassing local police officers in the process.

The Portland Mutual Aid Network has called for Korol’s release, urging supporters to call the Clark County Jail.

“Oriana Korol was peacefully protesting ICE on 10/12 and was illegally detained by ICE and DHS,” their statement reads. “She is the clarinet player for Unpresidented Brass Band, and was playing music for protestors. Protesting for immigrants is not a crime!”