Trump Signs Proclamation To Make Oval Office A National Monument, But Why?

It’s starting to become increasingly clear that Trump’s mission to renovate and rename America is simply the way he copes with the reality he’s always trying to evade. And that’s also why he seethed so hard over Barack Obama likening his Oval Office design to a Cheesecake Factory opened by Saddam Hussein. He really didn’t appreciate his predecessor breaking the fourth wall of his delusion like that.

And now that he’s struggling to grapple with the midterm elections ending in a crushing landslide for Democrats after all that campaigning and rallying he did for his sycophants in the GOP, he needs a new distraction and a new way to leave his mark after being so thoroughly and publicly rejected by U.S. voters.

So, he signed a proclamation that he says will preserve the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as a national monument in order to prevent any future president from, well, doing to his gold-encrusted office-slash-sleepy time room what he did to the White House’s East Wing, basically.

Much like his ballroom-slash-bunker, his botched reflecting pool, and his fight to add his name to the Kennedy Center, this move is just a continuation of Trump’s obsession with doing things nobody asked for while claiming everyone had been asking for it for generations.

He’s really out here pretending the Oval Office is in danger of being torn down once he’s gone. I mean, if I were the incoming president, I would definitely sage everything and burn all the furniture he got his Tang-flavored butt shavings all over, but still.

 “It will not be allowed to be touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people, in order to build something in a slightly different shape,” Trump said Thursday. “We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol, like the White House itself.”

According to PBS News, the proclamation does not prevent future presidents from restyling the Oval Office, as incoming presidents have always done, and it also doesn’t prevent a successor from rolling back the proclamation itself, which essentially makes it a useless, unenforceable non-proclamation, which honestly makes it the perfect gesture to symbolize his entire presidential legacy.

Here’s a little more on the proclamation, via PBS:

The proclamation, released after Trump’s remarks, says that nothing in it will “restrict the President’s authority to redecorate the monument, select furnishings, or make ordinary operational and security modifications that do not substantially impair the monument’s historic structure or architectural character.”

It orders the Interior secretary to manage the Oval Office and requires “documentation, review, and consideration of alternatives before any action that would substantially alter or demolish the monument.” Trump separately said any major changes would need review from Congress, though such a requirement is not in the document’s text.

“If they want to say, ‘Let’s not have oval anymore, let’s make it square,’ what happens is they have to go back to Congress and hopefully the Congress, the people in Congress, will be smart enough not to let that happen,” said Trump — who notably demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for his ballroom.

So, again, WTF was even the point of this?

The Oval Office has been part of the White House for 117 years; it was never going anywhere. So, if no one is looking to tear it down, and the proclamation doesn’t prevent it from being redesigned, nor is the proclamation itself irreversible, what are we even doing here?

It has to be cope, right?

After all, Trump made it a point to sign his useless-ass proclamation with a red cap that reads “VETO” sitting on the Resolute Desk, much like the remixed MAGA hat he posted to Truth Social following the blue tsunami he was so sure would never happen.

And actually, this might explain why Trump spent so much time during his final pitch to voters ahead of Election Day bloviating about that damn reflecting pool. He knew the writing was on the wall, and he needed something else to look at.

That man is hurt, and we love it for him.

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