David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama during his presidency, linked President Donald Trump’s complaints about renovations at the Federal Reserve to a “big political problem” the GOP will face in next year’s midterms.
Axelrod — while referring to Trump renewing his threat to sue Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for “gross incompetence” over the renovations on Monday — knocked the president’s “obsession” with such issues.
He pointed to how the president took to social media last week to tease marble armrests for seating at the newly Trump-branded Kennedy Center.
“People are saying to themselves, ‘What the hell does that have to do with me? I thought he was going to be fighting for me to bring my costs down?’” Axelrod said.
Axelrod also cited Trump showing off a marbleized floor following renovations of the White House’s Palm Room earlier this year.
“He seems obsessed with gold and putting his name on things and remodeling buildings and rebuilding monuments to himself,” he said.
Axelrod declared that the president has a “Marie Antoinette thing” going on.
“That is a big political problem and not for him … but Republicans should be really concerned about what they’re seeing,” he said.
Since the start of his presidency, Trump has decked the Oval Office in gold, paved the Rose Garden over for a patio, demolished the East Wing for a planned ballroom (which is expected to be named after himself), sprinkled petty swipes at his foes into an already-partisan “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the West Wing colonnade and installed massive flagpoles at the White House.
Trump’s name has also been slapped on the facade of the building that houses the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federal website for prescription drugs, an investment program, a $1 million “gold card” pathway to U.S. citizenship and a planned “Trump Class” of so-called “battleships.”
In October, the U.S. Treasury shared plans to mint a coin with Trump’s face on both sides in 2026, although such a move may be illegal.
