As President Trump worked to find a solution to the Russia-Ukraine War this August, he organized a meeting of several European political leaders at the White House.
President Trump then took a fascinating PR beating from reporters and commentators who, unable to find fault with the peacemaking effort itself, settled on the events as an opportunity to attack President Trump for the meeting rooms, the seating arrangements, and even the decorations in our over 200-year-old White House.
The story gives us an interesting window into the minds of the TDS-addled punditry, as their remarks belie a fundamental lack of awareness about the rest of the world.
When our Framers designed the Presidency, during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they attempted to craft a challenging combination of the political head of state (such as the prime minister of a parliamentary form of government) and the regal human representation of the nation (such as the figurehead king or queen).
They wanted our President to serve both purposes, to be formal enough to hold his own with the world’s monarchs, but be republican enough to function as a public servant.
The White House was designed with this effort in mind; it would be a cross between the palace of a king and the working executive office of a business or civic leader. The Oval Office is therefore meant to be comfortable enough for business meetings, while still being just formal enough to fit in with the palaces of foreign leaders.
Our Oval Office doesn’t have a king’s throne, just an office chair behind a wooden desk. It’s carpeted, with enough couches and chairs for the President’s typical meetings, and enough room to bring in a dozen more chairs when there are more guests than the norm. The walls are decorated with portraits of former presidents and statesmen, along with a few shiny sconces and knick-knacks.
And apparently, there’s just a bit too much bright golden color in the Oval Office to satisfy some of today’s pundits.
Perhaps they should ask their editors to fund a tour of Europe, so they can see for themselves how we compare with the much more “democratic” offices of our friends across the Pond.
Let’s begin with Great Britain. Number 10 Downing Street, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is currently embarrassing himself daily, has three meeting rooms; a meeting like this one would likely be held in the Pillard Room, an elegant formal space with a priceless Persian rug as the centerpiece, lit by a massive chandelier above, surrounded by formal Greek columns of golden-tan marble to give the impression of being outdoors in a temple despite being indoors in an office building.
Or perhaps we might visit the office of Emanuel Macron, current chief executive of France. His office has enough ornate gilt frames, arches, and mirrors to dazzle a fairy tale princess; his desk area is even on a raised platform of gilt tile.
President Macron’s office at the Palais d’Elysee would hardly seem out of place in the ostentatious days of the Bourbon monarchs whom the bloodthirsty French mob murdered to get a hold of it.
But notice that once the French mob took over these palaces, they didn’t knock them down and replace them all with modest meeting halls. Oh no. THAT egalitarian, they weren’t.
The French mob just cleaned up the blood, polished the silver, and moved right in, themselves.
Shall we look at one more? The President of Finland was another of the European dignitaries who visited Washington D.C. this week. Surely if we had held these meetings at the President’s offices in Finland, we wouldn’t have seen such fancy displays, right? Finland is just a little, unassuming Scandinavian country on the border of Russia, with fewer than six million people in the whole country. The country would be dwarfed by most of our big metros in the USA. Surely Finland’s president must be modest, right?
Well, now, there you might be surprised.
The President’s office in Finland is an imposing two story room, with shiny white Greek columns and bright gold-painted accents everywhere, with custom-made furniture to match, and a viewing gallery above so that the common folk can look on and appreciate their leaders in all their glory. It may be a little country, but its head of state is not denied an ego.
This isn’t to say that every leader in Europe has an ornate office like these, boasting centuries of provenance. Some European countries are newer, some are older. Some have more modern buildings than others, some double as museums and art galleries. And the countries that still have kings and queens, such as Great Britain, have throne rooms and monarchal office suites that put all of the above to shame.
But it is important to note how our Founding Fathers intended for our White House to do many things, and to chart an effective middle ground. And yes, one can argue that President Trump’s August meetings indicate that the Founders succeeded.
President Trump gathered several key players – not the combatants themselves, but the neighboring nations who are most affected by both the economic pain and the national defense risk of the war – and he hosted a successful summit at the White House. Our conference rooms, gardens and offices met the need, just as President Trump and his foreign policy team rose to the occasion, demanding progress in a stubborn conflict that has dragged on for far too long already.
Does the decor of the Oval Office, its beauty or its art exhibits, outrank the policy discussed within it? Of course not. The policy is what matters, not the surroundings.
But when our yellow press can’t find anything worthy of complaint, they can always seem to find something to stretch into a bitter, sniping op/ed, even if merely as a distraction so the voters don’t notice the accomplishments of this administration.
Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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