Trump Says Secret Service Wanted Oval Office Torn Down

The Oval Office has survived wars, crises, scandals and the passing of presidents. Donald Trump now says the historic room itself became the subject of an extraordinary proposal: tear it down and build another in its place.

In a TIME interview published on October 1, Trump said Secret Service officials had suggested replacing the current Oval Office. He recalled being told that the room should be taken down and rebuilt, a suggestion he said he rejected because it was a “special place”. The White House declined to comment further, while the Secret Service did not immediately respond to questions about Trump's remarks.

A Room Too Important To Lose

Trump said he had seen Secret Service personnel examining the Oval Office and asked what they were doing. According to his account, an official suggested that the room be demolished and replaced. Trump also said he had spent about six months asking White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles whether the room could be made a federal landmark, potentially protecting it from future demolition.

The Oval Office was constructed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and has since become synonymous with presidential power, hosting major speeches, foreign leaders and moments of national crisis. Trump has also remodelled the room during his second term, adding extensive gold decoration as part of his wider changes to the White House.

But Trump's account comes with an important distinction. Four former Secret Service officials told The Washington Post that the agency has encouraged previous administrations to strengthen security around the Oval Office. Past presidents declined such measures because doing so would have required them to relocate from the room. The officials did not independently confirm Trump's specific account of a proposal to demolish it.

The question of preserving the room also sits uneasily alongside Trump's broader White House makeover. The White House is already a National Historic Landmark, although Congress exempted it from the National Historic Preservation Act, allowing presidents considerable latitude to alter parts of the building. Preservation lawyer Greg Werkheiser questioned the legal significance of giving the Oval Office a separate landmark designation.

Trump's White House, Recast

The Oval Office proposal comes amid an unusually sweeping transformation of the presidential complex. Trump has backed security projects, demolished the East Wing for a planned ballroom and made extensive decorative changes elsewhere on the grounds. He has defended several of his construction projects by citing security and other considerations.

For now, there is no indication that the Oval Office is being demolished. Instead, Trump's remarks have turned the room itself into another question in the larger debate over how far a president can remake a building that is both a working seat of government and one of America's most recognisable symbols.