Donald Trump enthusiastically declared everything as “gold, all gold,” while giving a Fox News broadcaster a tour of the Oval Office, highlighting his latest decorative updates.

Although he might come across like a real estate agent with a practiced sales pitch, the President takes pride in showcasing a lesser-seen aspect of his persona—Donald Trump, the home makeover specialist.

During the tour, the broadcaster noticed some gold figures above the doors and inquired if they were cherubs. Trump corrected her, saying, “It’s angels. They say angels bring good luck, and we need a lot of luck in this country.”

Actually, they were cherubs that he’d flown up from his Florida palace but everything’s now so blinding in his office that the Leader of the Free World may be suffering from dazzled vision.

As he has proved in his flashy other homes – Trump Tower in New York and his Mar-a-Lago private club in Palm Beach, Florida – he can never have too much gold.

He’s something of an expert on the subject.

‘People have tried to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold and they have never been able to do it. You’ve never been able to match

gold with gold paint,’ he told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. ‘That’s why it’s gold,’ he added, no doubt leaving the station’s more credulous viewers to wonder if he meant solid gold (he’s publicly told visiting world leaders it’s all ’24-carat’).

As Trump sets about trying to mould the world to his satisfaction, he is determined to do the same with the White House. It’s not just about gold furnishings and gilding everything in sight, down to the button he presses when he wants a Diet Coke.

The skyscraper king, who recently raised eyebrows when he announced that he prefers classical architecture, has also concreted over the White House’s famous Rose Garden lawn and unveiled plans for a monumental £157million, 90,000sq ft ballroom, on which construction started this month.

Bling-tastic doesn’t begin to describe Trump’s vision for America’s most famous home.

‘It’s the Golden Office for the Golden Age,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rhapsodised of the Oval Office redesign. And that’s only the start.

Insiders say that while other Presidents understood they were only temporary inhabitants of the house, ever the property developer, Trump clearly wants to leave an imprint that will be permanent.

‘He’s trying to leave his mark in a very physical way on the White House, unlike any other President in recent history,’ White House historian Kate Andersen Brower said this week.

‘I just don’t think the White House is grandiose in the way that he wants it to be and he thinks it should be.’

She said that most Presidents were either too busy or, more often, too in awe of the White House’s history to do much to it, but they nonetheless had the power to do so, as long as they found someone other than the taxpayer to stump up the cost.

While the White House Historical Association, founded by Jackie Kennedy to preserve the building’s history, can offer ‘polite

suggestions’ to Presidents, they are free to ignore them and usually do, said Andersen Brower.

Past Presidents have installed conservatories, a cinema, bowling alley and a putting green – but nothing on this scale.

Trump’s successors could technically reverse all his changes but they’d have to find the money to do it and it could look ‘petty’, added Andersen Brower.

Critics are once more lining up to denounce Trump as tacky and gaudy, a columnist in The Washington Post griping: ‘Where the Oval Office once conjured gravitas and continuity through its restrained adornments, it now evokes insecurity and petulance. It is awash in gilt.’

Rock star Jack White, of the White Stripes, hilariously compared it to a wrestler’s dressing room. Online detectives, meanwhile, have gleefully revealed that almost exact facsimiles of the ’24- carat’ embellishments that have appeared on the Oval Office walls and mantelpiece can be bought, made of plastic, at DIY superstore Home Depot for £43 each and then spray-painted gold.

But, unfortunately for those who shudder at the thought of Trump remodelling the White House, the President has a high opinion of his aesthetic sensibilities.

‘I’ve seen architectural reviews over the years. I’m an expert at it,’ he said at a press conference this month where he announced that new federal buildings should be classically-designed.

‘I’ve gotten a lot of great reviews, but I’ve seen buildings that I didn’t think were very good,’ he added

Insiders say Trump, who told Fox News that the Oval Office ‘needed a little life’, has long been irritated at how small and austere the White House is.

Especially after he goes abroad and sees the size and splendour of other state leaders’ official residences. Buckingham Palace, for instance, is 15 times bigger (830,000sq ft compared to 55,000sq ft) with 775 rooms against 132 at the White House. 

For that he partly has George Washington to blame as the first President insisted that the official residence should reflect the modest, ‘by-and-for-the-people’ presidency the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The current incumbent, it goes without saying, doesn’t really do modest. After complaining that he wanted to see more glitz during his first administration (reportedly leading to a bitter contest between his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka over who was in charge of decor) Trump wasted little time when he returned in January. He enlisted the services of a Florida cabinetmaker, John Icart, who’d worked on his resort home of Mar-a-Lago, and flew him up to Washington on Air Force One.

Icart is called Trump’s ‘gold guy’ by White House staff. Icart not only brought some of Mar-a-Lago’s gold cherubs with him but also custom-made additional gold ‘accents’ for the Trumpified Oval Office, including gilded carvings around the mantelpiece and gold mouldings around the walls and ceiling to match the gold curtains that Joe Biden had and which, predictably, have stayed. 

Officials say Trump personally oversaw the home improvements. And he upped the gold factor even further by plastering the walls with more portraits of ex-Presidents, all in ornate gilded frames. 

Seven antique gold or silver-gilt urns and vases from the White House collection now line the Oval Office mantelpiece (which was festooned with plants during his first administration) while a large, gold FIFA World Cup trophy sits on the presidential oak Resolute Desk. The US hosts the World Cup final next summer.

As in his other homes, the spirit is very much Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles. And with this new Sun King, no detail is too small for a dose of bling.

Gold coasters bearing Trump’s name grace side tables and even the button he presses to summon his favourite tipple, Diet Coke, is now gold and sits on the desktop in a wooden box bearing the presidential seal. (Trump loves to joke that people assume it’s the nuclear missile launch button.)

He also wanted a huge chandelier in the Oval Office but was told the ceiling wouldn’t take it.

The sort of tarting-up that cynics might say wouldn’t be out of place in a Dubai-owned luxury hotel chain continues outside. The Rose Garden, created during John F Kennedy’s administration, is traditionally used for anything from major public announcements to the Thanks-giving turkey pardoning ceremony.

Trump has torn up the Rose Garden’s lawn – where President Ronald Reagan was famously photographed walking his dog with Margaret Thatcher – saying that it’s always wet and inconvenient for women wearing high heels. ‘The grass just doesn’t work,’ he complained.

So out it went and in came the concrete, on which is now a white marble patio festooned with giant umbrellas that he imported from Mar-a-Lago to shade the outdoor tables and chairs.

The new terrace hosts the Rose Garden Club where Trump (who chose the name) and senior members of his administration can entertain guests with food from the White House kitchen and piped music chosen by the President.

The Associated Press this week hailed it ‘Washington’s hottest club’. The Rose Garden transformation’s £1.5million cost was privately funded from donations to a charity called the Trust for the National Mall, although who picks up the catering bill will depend on whether it’s an official event or a private one.

What Trump’s done to the Oval Office and the Rose Garden pales, however, beside his monumental ballroom extravaganza, which the White House called a ‘much-needed and exquisite addition’ and which is already going up on the South Lawn.

Trump recently admitted it will probably end up being even bigger than originally announced and seat 900 people.

Architects’ drawings revealed that it will be all white and gold, with huge ceilings from which giant chandeliers will hang over tables adorned with gold candlesticks and cutlery.

Trump’s spokesman says the huge cost will be met by the President and private donors, and the latter have already pledged nearly £150million.

The planned ballroom looks much like the 20,000sq ft one –modestly named the Donald J Trump Grand Ballroom – he had built 20 years ago at Mar-a-Lago.

It has walls inlaid with £5million of gold leaf and there are gold-plated basins in the Ladies.

White House historian Andersen Brower doubts people would be complaining nearly so vociferously about his changes if it wasn’t Trump.

She said she had spoken to a lot of people who have worked in the White House who say it desperately needs a large entertaining space rather than, as at present, having to rely on erecting a tent on the South Lawn.

But she added: ‘The bigger question is the design of it. I worry about the oversight. I’ve been told he’s in charge of everything and he is not open to a lot of suggestion… there is a concern that it might be garish.’

Perish the thought.