Tarps Go Up at White House

The White House's front face is getting a facelift, President Trump's latest renovation project. Scaffolding has swallowed the North Portico in recent days as workers strip more than a century's worth of paint from its Ionic columns, repair the stone, and reassemble the area—lantern and all. A printed drape now masks the metal framework, CNN reports, bearing an image of the columns it's hiding. A White House official described the job as routine restoration; Trump calls it a redo that had gone unnoticed. "We've taken about 150 years of paint off of the columns," he told supporters, questioning whether President Biden ever spotted the flaws.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on The Katie Miller Podcast that Trump ordered the work after spotting damage to the columns. "President Trump comes out to greet a world leader, he sees door dings in the pillars and says, 'Look at all this stuff that needs to be repaired,'" Burgum said, per the New York Times. "It's all historic renovation work," Burgum added. "We're restoring the plaster, and not just at the door level—all the way up to the crowns of those towers." He said the work will be wrapped up quickly, per CNN.

The project adds to a growing list of Trump-era alterations in and around the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. construction zone. Since taking office, Trump has gilded the Oval Office, reworked the Roosevelt and Cabinet rooms, paved over the Rose Garden, razed the East Wing for a new ballroom, and just introduced gleaming gold "West Wing" signage on the Palm Room exterior. There had been talk of replacing the columns with a more ornate Corinthian design, but an official told the Times that isn't happening. The White House Historical Association said the North and South Porticos "remain as [White House architect James] Hoban built them, that on the South in 1824, and the North Portico between 1829 and 1831," per People.