Versailles for the Very Stupid

What Trump is doing to the White House isn’t a remodel. It’s a cry for help with chandeliers.

What Donald Trump is doing to the White House isn’t just offensive—it’s unholy.

It’s desecration with a building permit. The kind of aesthetic war crime you’d expect from a failed casino magnate with a God complex and a Five Below coupon code. He’s not restoring anything—he’s branding it. Rebranding our most sacred public space like it’s another bankrupt asset in his flaming dumpster fire of a real estate portfolio. Stripped of history. Smothered in cheap dazzle. Treated less like a national treasure and more like a prop warehouse for a dictator-themed variety hour.

This isn’t patriotism. It’s a golden goose-stepping makeover brought to you by gout, delusion, and Overstock.com.

And I’m watching it happen—sick to my stomach, heartbroken, furious—as a house that belongs to all of us gets molested into a shrine for one man’s screaming inadequacy.

The White House—our house—is being hijacked and turned into Versailles if you ordered it off Temu from a seller called “Dictator Chic.” It looks like Saddam Hussein’s foyer got raided by Liberace’s stylist and glued together by a drunk set designer from Real Housewives of Riyadh.

It doesn’t whisper dignity anymore. It screams delusion. And somehow, unbelievably, that’s the point.

Because Gold Lamé Caligula doesn’t see value in service, or humility, or history. He sees it in spectacle. In square footage. In chandeliers the size of sedans. He thinks godliness is gaudiness. That worth is something you paint gold, polish with narcissism, slap a cherub on and hang next to a mirror. That if he surrounds himself with “opulence”—shiny panels, oversized columns, chairs that look like Dracula threw up on a Hooters—maybe no one will notice the human void parked in the middle of it all.

Baron von Bronzer doesn’t just dip buildings in fake gold. He dips himself. His hair, his teeth, his orange lacquered skin, the contour caked on with a spatula, the cheap ties that hang like wilted ego appendages—every inch of him is a costume stitched from insecurity. He’s the world’s most expensive Halloween mask trying to convince people that wealth equals worth. That money equals meaning. That if he looks like he matters, maybe someone will actually believe he does.

He knows he’s a fraud. He knows he’s not clever or capable or wise. He knows he was never respected by his father, never admired by his peers, never loved without strings. He’s not interesting. He’s not athletic. He’s not deep. He’s not brave. He’s not funny. He’s shameless. And what he’s doing to the White House is what all hollow men do when they panic: overcompensate.

He doesn’t think dignity is earned. He thinks it’s installed—like marble countertops or an emotional support bidet. He thinks if you display enough chalices, no one will notice the swelling in his ankles, the sag in his face, the droop in his eyelids, or the fact that his brain keeps buffering mid-sentence.

If the curtains are heavy enough, maybe they’ll hide the fact that he’s nodding off in his own meetings—slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, and vanishing into his chair like a malfunctioning Madame Tussauds exhibit.

But in case the spectacle wasn’t loud enough, in case anyone missed the desperate scream for relevance, he’s now planted not one, but two giant car dealership flags on White House grounds. One on the front lawn. One in the back. A pair of polyester obelisks flapping like mascots for a 4th of July clearance sale on dignity. Nothing says “this is about America” quite like installing twin sky erections to scream your fragile manhood at the National Mall.

They’re not patriotic. They’re not noble. They’re not historic. They’re desperation in stars and stripes. Flags don’t ask questions. Flags don’t testify. Flags don’t get subpoenaed. They just wave—and he’s betting they’ll wave hard enough to drown out the echo of collapsing credibility. They’re flaccid, oversized lawn dicks for a maniacal man-baby who uses patriotism the way he uses spray tan: too much, too often, and always in the wrong places.

They are polyester distractions for a polyester presidency. And they’re just the warm-up act.

Because while those tacky wind thrashers flap like they’re begging for mercy, Trump’s latest act of monstrosity is happening inside—where, this afternoon, his propagandizing press secretary announced a new architectural abomination: a $200 million, 90,000 square foot gilded ballroom being added to the East Wing of the White House.

Ninety. Thousand. Square. Feet.

That’s bigger than a football field. That’s bigger than most Targets. That’s the distance between two small towns. You could fit three airplane hangars inside it. You could host the Super Bowl, a royal wedding, and a CPAC meltdown at the same time. It’s not a ballroom. It’s a cry for help in marble.

Let’s not sugarcoat this: that ballroom isn’t for events. It’s for ego. It’s not where diplomacy will happen. It’s where denial will echo. You don’t build a 90,000-square-foot party cavern in a time of recession and unrest unless you’re trying to disappear inside it and take the facts (Epstein anyone) hostage.

You could store the entire press corps in there and still have enough room left over for a hot tub, a grievance museum, a self-portrait gallery, and a dedicated space for Laura Loomer’s nightly shape-shift. It’s a Versailles-sized bunker for a man who can’t fit inside his own skin, so he’s building new ones out of drywall and delusion.

And guess what? You’re paying for it.

(No matter what he says about paying “out of his pocket” blah blah).

Two hundred million taxpayer dollars—for a ballroom you’ll never step foot in. For a gilded fantasy designed to convince one man that he still matters while the rest of us scream into our grocery receipts. Because if you’re broke, uninsured, or underwater, tough luck. But if you’re Trump and you want a place to scream karaoke at your own reflection, then you just gifted yourself a goddamn dance floor.

But we can’t “afford” pediatric cancer research.

We all know he’s not doing it for the country. He’s doing it for the photos. He’s doing it so the next time someone reminds him he incited a deadly attack against his own democracy, he can point to a chandelier and say, “But look how shiny.”

This isn’t about legacy. It’s about laundering disgrace through architecture.

His be-Besting birther mail-order bride Melania already set the tone. She bulldozed Jackie Kennedy’s cherry trees like she was prepping the Rose Garden for a high-gloss magazine shoot where warmth was considered a liability. She took one of the most meaningful living tributes in presidential history and turned it into a patio. Now, when you look out, you don’t see grace. You see gray. You see sterile slabs where life once bloomed. You see the aesthetic of indifference in every direction.

I’ve been to the White House. I’ve stood in awe beneath its ceilings, felt the weight of its history, marveled at its architecture—not just because it’s beautiful, but because it’s meaningful. I’ve stood a few feet from the Rose Garden and felt its calm, its reverence, its breath.

Now it looks like Mar-a-Fucking-Lago.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t give a damn what the Commander-in-Cheap does to his own shitty-ass pop-up properties. He can turn Mar-a-Lago into a Funhouse of Narcissism, where every mirror tells him he’s thin and every toilet sings his name. He can build a thousand ballrooms with statues of himself doing a split over Mount Rushmore.

I. Do. Not. Care.

But the White House is not his.

It is not a billboard. It is not a game show set. It is not a private sanctuary for self-worship and spray tan emergencies. And it sure as hell isn’t a gilded retreat for an overcooked infomercial leftover who tried to burn down democracy and now wants to redecorate over the ashes.

It is ours.

And it’s more than bricks and mortar. It’s more than history and architecture. The White House is the beating heart of a fragile promise. It’s a place where grief and triumph live in equal measure. Where children once played beneath portraits of giants, where ordinary citizens have stood in awe, where the people’s business is supposed to be done in the people’s name.

But now? He’s turning it into the mansion Navin R. Johnson lives in near the end of “The Jerk”— a living room with a plaster lion, a rotating bed with pink chiffon and zebra stripes, an all-red billiard room with a giant stuffed camel and a bathtub shaped like a clamshell. It’s all kitsch, all chaos, nothing but chandeliers and clownery and broken dreams held together with velvet ropes and delusion. It’s not presidential. It’s not symbolic. It’s a punchline in search of a laugh track.

Donald Trump is like a rabid dog with a UTI—he cannot stop pissing on everything sacred. Every decision he makes is a tantrum with scaffolding. Every new “upgrade” is a cry of desperation wrapped in drywall and glitter. He is not rebuilding. He is screaming through the wallpaper. He’s not preserving a legacy. He’s trying to bleach out the shame.

No other president—no matter how flawed—has ever treated the People’s House this way. No one else has tried to make it an altar for their inadequacy. Every other president, even the bad ones, knew: this house does not belong to you. You are a moment. Not the monument.

But not him.

He wants to carve his name into every window, stitch it into every curtain, pipe it through the heating vents like some shitty jingle from Hell. He wants to convince the world that if the ceilings are gilded enough, if the curtains are ornate enough, if the flags are tall enough, maybe no one will remember who he is and what he did.

But we will.

And when this nightmare ends—and it will end—we will still be here. We will remember. The flags. The lies. The “gold”. The Rose Garden grass. The bullshit ballroom. The ruin. The riot. The rot and the disgrace.

We will remember what he tried to steal.

And then we will take it all back.

And with that, today’s song.

I love you guys!!

Your incredible, unrelenting, amazing support on here has been life-changing for me (and my kiddos). Not to mention how blown away I am by the community you are all building.

Stay strong, stay safe, and stay away from emotional support bidets.

💙 Jo