What Trump Said About the Oval Office Decorations Is a Little Revealing

A new book about Donald Trump is being released. We can scrutinize it later for inaccuracies that will likely appear, although these recent efforts to detail the Trump presidency seem more credible. The book, written by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, will focus on the first year of Trump’s second term in office. However, there is a passage discussing the president’s comments about the Oval Office decorations that might have given a major hint about who he hopes will succeed him (via Associated Press) [emphasis mine]:

New @maggieNYT @jonathanvswan book describes how, after Trump redecorated the Oval Office to fill it with gold flourishes, someone asked the president about the likelihood that the next president would undo all that he done. Trump said: “Cubans love gold.”https://t.co/dgI9hHSMtI
— Michelle L. Price (@michellelprice) June 18, 2026

Showing off towering new flagpoles he had erected on the White House North and South Lawns last summer, President Donald Trump suggested that he wanted to make similar renovations in his first term but was worried about the negative press.
“You guys were after me,” he told reporters. “I was the hunted. And now I’m the hunter.”
The incident, recalled in “Regime Change,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book on the first year of Trump’s second term, encapsulates how different Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 has been from his first term.
[…]
The authors recount how Trump frequently quizzed aides about whether Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be better to succeed him.
Some donors promoted Rubio and some aides thought the secretary and the president had better personal chemistry than Trump and Vance. But Trump also indicated that he was impressed by Vance’s intellect and abilities during television interviews — particularly tough ones, the book says.
Trump is also said to be impressed by the background of Rubio, who is the son of Cuban immigrants. The book describes how, after Trump redecorated the Oval Office to fill it with gold flourishes, someone asked the president about the likelihood that the next president would undo all that he had done. Trump retorted: “Cubans love gold.”
But, Haberman and Swan write, Rubio and Vance are also friends. An example they offer is Rubio texting Vance after the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee’s comments about “ childless cat ladies ” became a scandal. Rubio offered to campaign with Vance to show his support.