Biden Trashes Trump Over ‘Disturbing’ Changes to the White House

Detailed summary

“Almost as disturbing as the gold bars on the walls of the White House and the Oval Office,” the 46th president said, in a swipe at Trump’s transformation of the People’s House…

Joe Biden has ripped into Donald Trump’s vanity projects as “beneath the country,” offering his take on the current president’s obsession with building.

Biden, 83, was asked what he made of Trump’s $600 million White House ballroom and the demolition of the White House East Wing during an interview with People.

“Almost as disturbing as the gold bars on the walls of the White House and the Oval Office,” the 46th president said, in a swipe at Trump’s transformation of the People’s House with gaudy gold trim, trinkets, and decor.

“I mean, what the hell are we talking about? I find it disturbing,” Biden continued, before offering his take on what’s behind Trump’s fixation on his vanity projects, which include his $100 million triumphal arch, his effort to revamp and rename the Kennedy Center after himself, his paving over of the White House Rose Garden, and his botched attempt to renovate the Reflecting Pool.

“I’ve viewed the president’s judgment in tearing down the East Wing and a number of other things as nothing more than to try to create monuments to himself: ‘I built that,” Biden surmised.

The Trump administration has spent or plans to spend at least $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars on his various vanity projects, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress.

Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee put the price tag closer to $1.8 billion—enough, they say, to cover 1.7 months of child care, pay the medical bills of 88,000 veterans for an entire year, or patch 17.7 million potholes.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans feel “dissatisfied” or “upset” with Trump’s building projects in Washington, D.C., according to a Washington Post poll released in July.

Biden is promoting his forthcoming book, Promise Me, America, in which he revealed an astonishingly warm letter Trump left him in the Oval Office in 2021, just before leaving the White House after losing the 2020 election.

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