MS NOW⁠95%

Trump’s latest White House ‘renovations’ take a turn toward vandalism⁠88%

By Steve Benen⁠95%

12/18/2025, 4:00:54 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 14 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Ad Hominem, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 71.6% saturation with 434 hits. Analysis detected 1,838 faulty-reasoning hits from 606 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 80.2% and a BS Rank of ⁠88% (2,726 of 21,230 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 87.20% of the article peer group.

The “Presidential Walk of Fame” was already a tacky mess, and one report suggests it’s now “even more stunningly stupid.” 
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. 
Then his ambitions took a more destructive turn: The president tore down the entirety of the East Wing, despite having promised not to do so, to make room for a vanity project, a giant ballroom. 
But to fully appreciate just how ridiculous the overhaul has become, consider what Trump has done to the colonnade at the White House exterior on the south side of the mansion. 
In September, the Republican installed what was billed as a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” featuring images of American presidents. 
Predictably, the gaudy display was turned into an exercise in juvenile political trolling: Where there was supposed to be an image of Joe Biden, there’s a framed photograph of an autopen. 
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.”) 
While this display was already a tacky embarrassment, a New York magazine report made the case that it’s now “even more stunningly stupid.” 
The conversation about Trump’s White House renovations is important, but it’s worth expanding the conversation to include what can be described as Trump’s White House vandalism. 
To add insult to injury, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News in a statement that Trump wrote the text of “many” of the plaques. 
“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each president and the legacy they left behind,” she said. 
“As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself.” 
For now, let’s not get sidetracked by a debate about their eloquence. 
Let’s also skip past Leavitt’s dangling participle and the hilarious suggestion that Trump is “a student of history.” 
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. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.3%MS NOW: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 1.2%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.7%MS NOW: 3.7%Availability Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.2%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 5.1%Steve Benen: 10.5%MS NOW: 7.5%Confirmation Bias5.1%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 71.6%Steve Benen: 23.0%MS NOW: 15.5%Framing Effect71.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 4.7%MS NOW: 3.1%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.9%MS NOW: 2.2%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.9%MS NOW: 1.3%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 3.0%Steve Benen: 4.4%MS NOW: 1.8%Horn Effect3.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.4%MS NOW: 3.5%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.4%MS NOW: 0.7%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 71.6%Steve Benen: 29.0%MS NOW: 19.2%Negativity Bias71.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.3%MS NOW: 2.4%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 3.6%Steve Benen: 3.2%MS NOW: 2.6%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias3.6%This article: 2.8%Steve Benen: 3.1%MS NOW: 2.6%Overconfidence Bias2.8%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.1%MS NOW: 3.3%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.6%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 2.9%MS NOW: 1.8%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.9%MS NOW: 1.1%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 9.4%Steve Benen: 2.1%MS NOW: 2.4%Self-Serving Bias9.4%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.9%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 52.1%Steve Benen: 7.8%MS NOW: 4.8%Ad Hominem52.1%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.9%MS NOW: 1.7%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 2.0%MS NOW: 2.6%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 2.1%Steve Benen: 6.3%MS NOW: 5.4%Appeal to Authority2.1%This article: 71.6%Steve Benen: 11.3%MS NOW: 9.8%Appeal to Emotion71.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.0%MS NOW: 0.1%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.2%MS NOW: 0.9%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.5%MS NOW: 2.4%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.4%MS NOW: 0.9%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.3%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 2.2%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.0%MS NOW: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 4.5%Steve Benen: 2.2%MS NOW: 1.3%Genetic Fallacy4.5%This article: 1.5%Steve Benen: 8.9%MS NOW: 8.1%Hasty Generalization1.5%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.2%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.5%MS NOW: 0.3%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.3%MS NOW: 3.2%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 3.0%Steve Benen: 0.7%MS NOW: 0.7%Red Herring3.0%This article: 1.3%Steve Benen: 1.7%MS NOW: 2.2%Slippery Slope1.3%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.3%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 1.3%Straw Man0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.6%Tu Quoque0.0%

606 words analyzed.

Speakers

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Analysis

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