mr. trump goes to washington
Will Donald Trump even live in the White House?
Donald Trump is a man who likes to sleep in his own bed and has even been known to fly great distances across the country rather than spend a night away from Trump Tower in New York City. So while a certain 132-room home on Pennsylvania Avenue might be the dream residence of many a politician, as Barbara Walters noted last November during a visit to Trump's Manhattan home, "For many the White House is a step up. I'm looking around this room; the White House might be a step down." Will Trump even deign to live in the White House now that he has been elected?
So far, Trump has said yes, going as far as to add that he will "rarely leave" it. "Yes, I would live in the White House because it's the appropriate thing to do," he said in June of last year. (Whether his wife Melania Trump will join him there, on the other hand, is a little less clear).
But will Trump then miss the Versailles-like decor of Trump Tower once he's settled into the comparatively modest Georgian-style White House? "If I were elected I would probably look at the White House, and maybe touch it up a little bit," Trump once told People. "But the White House is a special place, you don't want to do much touching."
Political historian Douglas Brinkley isn't so convinced the White House will make it out unscathed. "Trump is like a one-man Gilded Age, carrying opulence wherever he goes," he told The New York Times in March. "We've never had someone running for president who is a bling artist."