The timing is the story.
Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday declaring the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room national monuments, according to a report by SCMP. The president said the designation would prevent future changes to the rooms, and that major modifications would require approval from Congress. It was his first official action after his party was swept aside in midterm elections on Tuesday.
The timing is the story. A president whose party has just lost ground in Congress chose, as his opening move, to protect a room he has gradually filled with gold flourishes, portraits and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sitting on the Resolute Desk as he signed was a red baseball cap bearing the word "VETO", which the report describes as a nod to the shifting balance of power in Washington. When he gathered reporters, however, it was to talk about the decor.
The measure's durability is open to question. As the report notes, proclamations can themselves be reversed, and Trump has done exactly that to roll back national monuments designated by others. Whether a monument declaration can bind a future president's hand over the interior of the White House is therefore not established. Trump did not specify what threat he was seeking to guard against, though he suggested the office might face one. "It will not be allowed to be touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people, in order to build something in a slightly different shape," he said, adding that anyone planning to knock down walls should call him wherever he may be.
The signing was the third consecutive day on which the president addressed his Washington building projects. On Wednesday, the day after Republican defeats in key races, he gathered reporters to sign the final beam raised during construction of his ballroom. On Monday he visited the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to discuss its renovation. Trump has faced several lawsuits alleging that his beautification projects were carried out without the necessary approval, according to the report.
Scrutiny is already taking shape elsewhere. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a flurry of letters on Thursday to known donors to Trump's ballroom, demanding information or warning of "alternative measures to obtain compliance". The report does not say what those measures would be, nor how donors have responded.
What is not yet known is how Congress will treat the proclamation, whether the monument designation carries any legal force against a successor, and what the letters to donors will produce. What the episode does show is a president turning to the symbolism of the office as his political position narrows, and an opposition beginning to test the financing behind his renovations.
