Donald Trump says the Secret Service wanted to demolish the Oval Office, and he refused.
"Sir, we think the Oval Office should be taken down, and we'll build a new one, sir," he quoted an agent telling him, in a TIME interview published Thursday. "I said, 'My ass, you can't build a new one. This is a special place.'"
He wants the room protected. He told the magazine he has spent six months asking his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, for a statement: "Will we save this room? Will we make it a federal landmark?" The room he wants saved is the one he redecorated in gold.
The rest of the house he is taking apart. He demolished the East Wing in October 2025 for a ballroom he now prices at $400 million. He paved the Rose Garden. He laid a granite helipad on the South Lawn and walked Xi Jinping across it on September 24 while the White House filmed. And on Thursday the National Capital Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve a new visitor screening facility, most of it underground, off 15th Street.
Narativ called it a palace in August and reported the helipad on September 21, three days before Xi stood on it. He has four projects going. So what would a federal landmark protect?
