The Republic of Hunger – and Its President in a Marble Bathroom

There are political symbols that make history - and then there are Donald Trump’s toilets. While millions of people in the country do not know how they will pay for their next meal, the president has decided to renovate the part of the White House that comes closest to his presidency: the bathroom. On Friday, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, appeared virtually at the lectern - and tweeted as if she had experienced a revelation. “When I first learned that a toilet like that existed inside the White House, I was horrified,” she wrote. Horrified, yes, traumatized, apparently by the idea that green tiles once existed in the Lincoln Bathroom. The young spokeswoman, who otherwise accompanies the collapse of democracy with the smile of a homecoming queen, continued to gush: “President Trump is making the People’s House more elegant and beautiful for generations of Americans to come!”

Beneath her post was another: Donald Trump himself announced that he had “renovated” the “Lincoln Bathroom” in the White House - to remove the “Art Deco green tiles” of the 1940s. These, said the president, were “completely inappropriate for the Lincoln era.” He has now had the bathroom designed “in black and white polished statuary marble” - “fitting for the time of Abraham Lincoln” and possibly “made from the marble that was originally there.” Two photos accompanied the statement: on the left, the supposedly desecrated green-tiled hell; on the right, the new gleaming marble sanctuary - gold-accented, like a mix of Caesar’s Palace and a Las Vegas luxury suite.
Dazu zwei Fotos: links die angeblich entweihte grüne Fliesenhölle, rechts das neue, glänzende Marmorheiligtum – golden akzentuiert, wie eine Mischung aus Caesars Palast und einer Las-Vegas-Luxus-Suite.

The scene is not without tragicomedy: a president restoring toilets to save history. A cabinet talking about marble while social aid is being cut. All the court rulings on the issue were more than mere legal defeats - they were a moral slap in the face. They forced a government to give its own citizens what had already been paid for. That it took judges to do so is the real scandal. And a press secretary who, on a social media platform, defends the aesthetics of a washbasin in near-religious ecstasy. The “People’s House,” she says, is becoming “more elegant and beautiful” - as if the nation could be saved through bathroom design. Leavitt’s “horrified” moment has long become a symbol. Not of moral shock, but of a government that loses its composure when a wall is too green, but not when there is hunger, war, or censorship. While Trump polishes the marble to a shine, democracy beneath it is cracking apart.

America 2025 - Donald Trump speaks of “fraud,” of “illegals,” of “system abuse.” He claims the state is being robbed, that aid goes to “foreigners.” But the numbers do not lie. According to official data from the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture, 89.4 percent of SNAP recipients in the United States were born in the country, another 6.2 percent are naturalized citizens. Only 3.3 percent are non-citizens. Even when refugees are included, the share of non-American recipients remains below four percent. In other words, almost 95 percent of those who receive food assistance are not foreigners - they are America.

Yet the tone in which all this is presented reveals the real ideology: beauty as power, surface as truth, aesthetics as morality. The president’s bathroom becomes the symbol of a rule that washes away everything unpleasant - until only its own reflection remains. Leavitt says she was “horrified.” Now we know by what: not by history, but by normality. Because when a government is shocked by the color of tiles while cutting food aid for millions, it is no longer a joke but total satire. A president who names his toilets after Lincoln and shapes his politics after Versailles does not stand on a throne - he sits on one.
Leavitt sagt, sie sei „entsetzt“ gewesen. Wir wissen nun, wovor: nicht vor der Geschichte, sondern vor der Normalität. Denn wenn sich eine Regierung über die Farbe von Fliesen schockiert, während sie Millionen die Lebensmittelhilfe entzieht, dann ist das kein Witz mehr, sondern die vollkommene Satire. Ein Präsident, der seine Toiletten nach Lincoln benennt und seine Politik nach Versailles formt, steht nicht auf einem Thron – er sitzt darauf.