When it comes to altering the White House, it’s been a busy year for Donald Trump. The incumbent president decided, for example, to pave the Rose Garden. He has taken a borderline unhealthy interest in interior decorating, including bringing in his “gold guy” to add gold finishes to just about everything in the Oval Office.

Trump also installed a flagpole that he seemed awfully excited about, he boasted about “ripping” apart the tile in the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom, he installed a mirror and bronze lettering at the entrance to the West Wing, and he turned the Oval Office study into a depot for “TRUMP 2028” merch, as if it were a cheap gift shop at a Trump-owned property.....

This week it got worse. NBC News reported:

The White House has installed plaques on the exterior of the building bashing President Donald Trump’s predecessors, including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and promoting disinformation about their administrations.

The plaques were hung up below presidential portraits that have been on display on Trump’s recently added ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ in the White House colonnade.

A related Washington Post report noted that the plaques “have all the feel of an official marker placed at a historical site, with bronze-hued trim and gold-lettered type.” But the words on the plaques “are written in the style of a Truth Social post.”

That’s not a compliment. The displays smear assorted Democrats in ways that are cheap and dishonest, while praising others based on their associations with the incumbent. (The one for Ronald Reagan reads in part, “He was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House.”)

Per @garretthaake.bsky.social, the extremely tacky "presidential wall of fame" that lines the colonnade to the West Wing now has obviously-Trump-penned plaques insulting or praising the presidents.

— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) 2025-12-17T17:47:48.070Z

......Let’s note that the sitting American president, at a time when he ought to be quite busy with weighty responsibilities of international import, is investing time and energy into writing trolling messages for fake plaques.

This White House is obsessed with trivialities and distractions. By all appearances, the fixation is getting worse.