Donald Trump apparently wrote his inaugural address at the Mar-a-Lago receptionist's desk

Donald Trump using a Sharpie, his trademark writing implement

(Image credit: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 19 January 2017

President-elect Donald Trump wants you to know that he's been working really hard on his inaugural address, to be delivered on Friday. He posted a photo on Wednesday to prove it.

You can also spot the desk, in what appears to be a public hallway, in the Mar-a-Lago photo gallery, and the hallway in historic photographs of the estate Trump purchased in 1985. New York's Madison Malone Kircher suggests, politely and with more documentation, that maybe the photo isn't all that it seems to be. "We're not saying that Trump didn't write his speech, in Sharpie, on a legal pad, at this desk, with its magnificent and inspirational eagle statue," she wrote, dryly. "Obviously he did; why would the president-elect stage such a photograph? It seems clear the Secret Service cleared out Mar-a-Lago, to give Trump the privacy and quiet he needed, and he chose that particular hallway desk to begin writing his speech." We'll get to hear the fruit of his purported work on Friday.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.