You may have seen that President Donald Trump has been doing some remodeling around the White House, including a new Rose Garden terrace, so there is a lot of gold in the Oval Office. My colleague Abdallah Fayyad I recently wrote about this remodeling, not just the president’s idea – Instead, this is the most direct representation of Trump’s efforts to reshape the United States in his image.
I sat down with Abdallah and talked about the rebranding of the Vox Daily Newsletter today. Our conversation is below and you can also sign up for a newsletter here About such a conversation.
You wrote that Trump is remodeling the United States. What is that?
One thing I’ve been interested in Trump for a long time is how cheesy his entire aesthetic, and how he’s showing off his wealth and power in the bravest way. We saw this in his first semester, and we saw it again in his second semester, how he imposed his special style on the American public, and his recent makeover of the White House, All gold in the Oval Officeplanned to be $200 million The banquet hall extends to the east wing. It’s all done in ace style. It mimics his residence, whether it is his penthouse in New York or Margrago.
I was thinking that he was more than just a politician. It has been a long time since Trump is the cultural idol we like. Understanding Trump’s cultural elements – how he portrays himself in the media, his performance, and aspects of his presidency or his personality – does help inform us about his broader political projects as president of the United States.
Trump finally intertwined the way the United States changed its name so deeply that we cannot separate the two so that he became the most lasting symbol of America. He wanted to be a very special kind of America, and that was his broader vision of how he could reshape America.
You mentioned some rewrite examples. Where does this all come from? What is Trump’s aesthetic?
To truly understand Trump’s style and his tastes, his values, you have to go back to the era when he leaped into the American zeitgeist through the sheer power of will. It was New York in the 1980s, especially the wealthy and famous way of life in the 1980s. Everything we know, Trump values today, whether it’s Time magazine covers, TV ratings, something like that – all of which are signs of the influence of that era and location, and he’s been chasing that influence since then, and he’s never really let it go.
Especially that era was defined by greed. This is defined by these fantasy displays of wealth, and these attention-grabbing attempts are to show off your wealth. Trump has never really shy away from how rich he is. This is his attempt to combine with the upper echelons of American society and the elite circle of American society. And, you know, even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he always saw himself as an outsider. But he had this vulgar impulse, just showing off his wealth and power to prove that he had done it, and he was the elite of the elite.
He has long been fascinated by having the tallest and largest buildings in the world. He was obsessed with naming his name to everything he built. He put his name on everything. He thought it was everywhere. I think this defines the cultural aspect of Trump himself, that is, Trump has never been just interested in becoming famous.
He not only wants to be a celebrity. He just thought about everywhere. So when you think about Trump this way, it’s not that he just wants to be president. He wants you to think about him. He wants you to see him. He has always been chasing what he has been doing to pursue his entire adult life.
What does this fixation mean to his policy agenda?
I think many remodels have sinister motivations. Only a certain type of United States can interact with Trump. Trump does not like to have connections with the United States. The specific United States that Trump doesn’t want to be associated with is the one elected by Barack Obama, a multiracial, cross-class alliance that formed a decisive majority in 2008 and 2012.
Part of rebranding is fundamentally challenging what it means to be an American. We see this through this eternal nostalgia of white America that penetrates Trump’s White House. We see this through his harsh immigration repression. We see this through his review of speeches. We see this, the respect for Trump by businesses, universities or media groups.
The first aspect of rebranding is changing the way American perceived and typical American lifestyles, and a clear example is looking at him Take over the Kennedy Center. He is a kind of art that tries to decide what Americans should like. He wants to change the gender norms in the United States. Masculinity and American image are very intertwined. He is trying to change American culture, which has a real impact on people’s lives. It does inform his policy approach, whether it is through targeting trans people, targeting immigration, and targeting U.S. citizenship, that are the obvious ways we see this reshaping.
