President Donald Trump has reportedly found a way to cram even more golden garnish on the Oval Office walls just a day after a photo of his tube of Krazy Glue went viral.
CNN White House producer DJ Judd first spotted the adhesive on Monday evening, as Trump fielded reporters' questions about Iran from behind the Resolute Desk.
The next morning, Daily Mail White House correspondent Jon Michael Raasch also spotted something new on the marble fireplace: two golden seals that hadn't been there in late April, when Trump met King Charles in the same room.
A new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, "Regime Change," revealed that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt once walked in to find Trump personally gluing gilded appliqués onto the fireplace mantel.
"As he was known to prefer his own aesthetic handiwork to anyone else's," the authors write, "the sight of the president squeezing glue onto gilded appliqués and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle."
Photos from the Oval Office show it has been filling up with gold since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 — gold cherubs above the doors, gilded Rococo mirrors, golden eagle statues, and gold-framed portraits crowding the walls.
Washington Post senior critic Robin Givhan told NPR that the effect runs counter to what the room has always stood for.
"Part of the power of the Oval Office has always come from the fact that it didn't need all of these elements in order to convey authority," Givhan said. "The authority came from the people and from democracy."
New York-based interior designer Tommy Landen criticized the "overwhelming" gold ornamentation in an interview with Newsweek.
"When you overload it and just keep adding more and more, it becomes overwhelming," Landen said. "It becomes gaudy and tacky."
During a Fox News tour of the White House, Trump insisted the decorations are made from 24-karat gold. But HuffPost reported that at least some of the curlicue moldings resemble a polyurethane item made in Taiwan and sold at Home Depot for $58.
