Trump's First 100 Days

The President speaks on amassing power, confronting the courts, and upending the world America made

- By Eric Cortellessa

Donald Trump at the White House on April 22, 2025, ahead of an interview in the West Wing

President Donald Trump emerges through a pair of handsome wooden doors on the third floor of the White House.

On his way down the wide, carpeted staircase, he passes portraits of his predecessors. Nixon is opposite the landing outside the residence. Two flights down, he has swapped the placement of Clinton and Lincoln, moving a massive painting of the latter into the main entrance hall of the mansion. “Lincoln is Lincoln, in all fairness,” he explains. “And I gave Clinton a good space.” But it’s the portrait around the corner that Trump wants to show off.

It’s a giant painting of a photograph—that photograph, the famous image of Trump, fist raised, blood trickling down his face, after the attempt on his life last July at a rally in Butler, Pa. It hangs across the foyer from a portrait of Obama, in tacit competition. When they bring tours in, everyone wants to look at this one, Trump says, gesturing to the painting of himself, in Technicolor defiance. “100 to 1, they prefer that,” he says. “It’s incredible.”

Making his way out to the Rose Garden, he walks up the inclined colonnade toward the Oval Office, describing the other alterations to the decor, both inside and out. His imprint on his workspace is apparent. The molding and mantels have gold accents now, and he has filled the walls with portraits of other Presidents in gilded frames. He has hung an early copy of the Declaration of Independence behind a set of blue curtains. The box with a red button that allows Trump to summon Diet Cokes is back on the Resolute desk, behind which stands a new battalion of flags, including one for the U.S. Space Force, the military branch he established. A map of the “Gulf of America,” as Trump has rechristened the Gulf of Mexico, was propped on a stand nearby.