![]() The modern art favored by the Obama family is mostly gone, replaced with classic oils, including portraits of Trump’s favorite predecessors, like Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, with Pence, watches a replay of Senate hearings from a private dining room near the Oval OfficeĮach president leaves his mark on the building, and Trump has wasted little time making his. It just happened,” he says as he stands up from the desk. In less than 24 hours, Trump will roil the nation again by announcing the firing of his FBI Director, James Comey, who is leading an investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia. ![]() Financial markets have climbed, cruise missiles have fallen, and the world has watched with trepidation and confusion. The first three months of his presidency have been unsettling, a blur of confrontation, policy pivots and regulatory revolution. Tonight, at dusk on May 8, he invites three TIME correspondents for a tour of his home and office, followed by a four-course dinner in the Blue Room, the oval-shaped parlor on the first floor of the executive mansion. As is often the case when reporters come through, he has a plan, a story he wants to tell. ![]() It’s down the hall, in his private dining room in the West Wing, a few steps away. I had the biggest people in the country here.”īut right now, there is something else he wants to show. “Never had people,” Trump likes to say of Obama’s use of the space. The New England Patriots got to take pictures behind the desk recently, and the President says the billionaire Ronald Lauder, a great collector of art, went crazy when he saw the painting of George Washington above the fireplace. Vice President Mike Pence brought by the Prime Minister of Georgia unscheduled for a photo. McMaster had stopped by with a foreign military delegation. Just a few hours earlier, National Security Adviser H.R. His presence always seems to consume the room.Īnd the stream of visitors is constant. Trump,” and everyone turns to listen when he speaks. In practice, it feels much like his old corner office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, minus all the clutter of memorabilia, a place to convene an audience, to broadcast his exceptionalism, to entertain, take photos, amaze and make deals. For Trump, the room functions as something like a royal court or meeting hall, with open doors that senior aides and distinguished visitors flock through when he is in the building. When he held the job, Barack Obama tended to treat the Oval Office like a sanctum sanctorum, accessible only for a small circle of advisers to break its silence on a tightly regulated schedule. Photograph by Benjamin Rasmussen for TIME
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