'Masterpiece of bad taste': Trump's pride and joy torn apart by expert

President Donald Trump may not be a devotee of history in the classical sense, but he does seem obsessed with emulating one of France's flashiest monarchs, according to a new report.

Historian David Harrison wrote in Slate that Trump's love of all things gilded puts him on par with King Louis XIV, better known as "The Sun King."

He was referring to the gold embellishments that Trump has filled the the White House with — decorations he is so proud of he frequently brags about them to visitors of the Oval Office.

"I always assumed that most Americans had no real stomach for the hubris and sheer garishness that defined the style and surroundings of France’s most famous king," Harrison wrote. "When I’ve taken students to Versailles, I’ve noticed that as much as they admire the size and ambitiousness of the château that Louis XIV declared the center of French government, they nonetheless agree with the caustic assessment of the Duke de Saint-Simon, Louis XIV’s greatest critic: It’s 'a masterpiece of bad taste.'”

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But it's Trump's "view of executive authority" that, Harrison wrote, should be cause for alarm. Harrison cited descriptions of Louis's worst sycophantic courtiers and "the Sun King’s appetite for adulation," that mirrored "our own leader’s vulnerability to such praise."

"The irony is that Donald Trump is not governing like Louis XIV, and we would probably be better off if he did," Harrison wrote. "The Sun King massively invested in science, technology, the arts, and intellectual activity; Trump disdains them all."

Harrison wrote that "in terms of incompetence, ideology-driven decision-making, and a deliberate lack of imagination, the president resembles less Louis XIV and more his great-great-grandson — a man who became king by accident, married a woman from central Europe, and was unable to assume the grandeur of his Versailles forebear.

"He ruled as Louis XVI, and perhaps his finest decision was supporting the rebellious American colonists against France’s oldest enemy, the British. Because of this mediocre king, who clung so desperately to the fantasies of absolutism that he was later overthrown and guillotined by his own people, the American experiment with republican government was able to commence."

Read The Slate article here.