No, Trump’s Oval Office decor-maxxing is not a dog-whistle for monarchy. It’s actually on-brand, not just for Trump, but for America.
Trump critics often engage in what Federalist contributor Inez Stepman calls the “Hitler also ate breakfast” fallacy: pointing out some tertiary or non-evil habit of Adolf Hitler’s like driving in a car or having an affinity for tariffs, and drawing a comparison to Trump, as if any mundane activity in which Hitler ever engaged is necessarily and permanently fascist-coded. In a 1,700-word thinkpiece published Wednesday, Washington Post opinion columnist Carolina Miranda used that blueprint to draw parallels between President Donald Trump and a new historical villain — the famously absolutist King Louis XIV of France — based on similarities in their interior decorating taste.
If you look at the maximalist gold accents with which Trump has appointed the Oval Office, “the sparkle conveys something more insidious about how Trump views himself,” Miranda writes. “Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute.”
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https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/24/the-media-have-a-new-conspiracy-theory-about-trumps-interior-decorating/