A political columnist is comparing President Donald Trump's gilded redecoration of Washington to the excesses of the French monarchy on the eve of the revolution that toppled it.
In a column titled "Caligula on the Potomac," political analyst and longtime federal trial attorney Sabrina Haake argues that Trump is "desecrating the nation's capital monument by monument," remaking the city in his own gold-plated image.
The centerpiece of her critique is Trump's appetite for gold. She points to the Oval Office, which the president has redecorated with heavy gold filigree, gold cherubs, gold trim and gold furniture. That "gold overkill aesthetic," Haake writes, is "reminiscent of Versailles just before the French monarchs were beheaded" — a comparison she uses to argue that Trump's historical ignorance isn't confined to American history.
Haake catalogs what she sees as a sprawling vanity project on the public dime: golden Trump statues, gold coins bearing his likeness, commemorative passports featuring his photo, and enormous banners of Trump — which she brands "Nazi chic" — draped across the DOJ, Labor and Agriculture buildings. She notes that a former FBI director called the banners "sickening" for their authoritarian symbolism.
She reserves particular alarm for Trump's proposed 250-foot "Triumphal Arch," which the president has said would be, "along with the White House Ballroom, the Greatest Structure in Washington." Haake writes that the arch — more than double the height of the Lincoln Memorial — would obstruct the historic sightline connecting the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, a vista she says was designed so Lincoln would forever gaze on the resting place of more than 400,000 veterans.
The weekend's UFC cage match on the South Lawn fits the same theme, in her telling. After musicians refused to perform at the nation's 250th birthday celebration, she writes, the cage fight — staged inside a towering metal structure dubbed "the Claw" — became the marquee entertainment for what she casts as a "wannabe Roman Emperor" marking his 80th birthday.
Haake also revisits Trump's overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which she says he had repainted "circus blue" and posted about on Truth Social while griping about "Biden filth and incompetence." She notes the work went to a no-bid contractor Trump initially said had done his personal pool at his Virginia golf club — a claim he later reversed — with the cost ballooning from under $2 million to $13.1 million.
Underlying it all, the analyst argues, is a legal problem: Congress, not the president, controls federal property. She points to a pending National Trust lawsuit contending the White House grounds, a national park, can't be remade without congressional approval.
"Future generations will study this era," Haake writes, predicting they will learn about "the fragility of democracy" — and the capital's foundation now bearing the weight of "Trump's self-regard."