President Trump had a history lesson for Barack Obama on Monday. Asked at Joint Base Andrews about Obama mocking the White House restoration as looking like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” the President spent three minutes explaining what the People’s House looked like when he got there. “You know, I’ve taken care of the White House. I fixed it with the finest artisans in the world,” Trump said. “We re-skinned it. It was in horrible shape.”
“A lot of the ornaments of the things that it was originally built with on the White House were missing or damaged or gone for a long time,” he said. “They were laying on the ground in some cases. The exterior plaster was broken, cracked. The painting was terrible. And I re-skinned the building beautifully with the highest, most talented people. Anywhere in the world you’re not going to find more talent.”
The difference, the President said, is that his predecessor never noticed. “Guys like Obama, they would pass the front door. They’d see the broken masonry, they’d see the beautiful pilasters that were all broken. For years they were broken. And he wouldn’t notice,” Trump said. “He doesn’t notice dirt and filth that hadn’t been cleaned, where the walls hadn’t been cleaned for years.”
“The White House is now in the best shape it’s been since 1792 when it was built,” Trump said, crediting the craftsmen, many from the Department of the Interior, who did the work with “very little money spent. It’s not about money. It’s about seeing.” Where ornaments around the windows survived on one side and had fallen off the other, “we took molds of the one side and we put it on the other side and we did a beautiful job.”
“We have to explain to Obama that the White House is a symbol of America and it has to be maintained properly,” the President said. “The columns can’t be broken. The bricks can’t be falling off from under the plaster. And for you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you are a lousy president.”
Then he boarded Air Force One for Mississippi, eight days from Election Day, leaving behind a White House that finally looks like the symbol of a nation in its Golden Age.
