Trump Tells TIME the Secret Service Wanted the Oval Office Torn Down. He Said No.

President Trump says the Secret Service once proposed tearing down the Oval Office and building a new one, and that he refused. He made the claim in a White House interview with TIME conducted on Sept. 28 and published on Oct. 1, 2026, in which he spent a long stretch defending the renovations, the new helipad and the ballroom that have remade the executive mansion during his second term.

Asked what he would miss most about the White House when he leaves, Trump did not hesitate. “This beautiful room that nobody should be allowed to rip down. The Oval Office.” He said he had been asking chief of staff Susie Wiles “for six months” for a statement on preserving it: “Will we save this room? Will we make it a federal landmark?”

“This is a special place”

Then came the story that grabbed headlines. According to TIME’s published transcript, Trump recalled noticing Secret Service personnel studying the room. “I see the Secret Service looking, and I say, ‘What are you guys looking at?’ ‘Sir, we think the Oval Office should be taken down, and we’ll build a new one, sir.'” His answer, in his telling, was an emphatic no, delivered in saltier language than most presidents use on the record, ending with: “You can’t build a new one. This is a special place.”

The account comes from Trump alone. The New York Post noted that he did not explain why the agency would want the room replaced, and the Secret Service’s side of the conversation has not been made public. What is clear is the president’s position: the Oval Office stays, and he wants it protected from whoever comes next.

He also singled out the Cabinet Room, which he called “gorgeous” now and “a disgusting mess” before. “This whole place was a disgusting mess, and now it’s perfect,” he said.

“A disgraceful dump”

TIME’s interviewers, Senior Political Correspondent Eric Cortellessa and Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, pressed Trump on how his building projects connect to Americans struggling to pay their bills. His answer was that the White House is “a symbol of America” and that he found it falling apart.

“The White House was a dump. The moldings were falling off the outside of the building. It hadn’t been painted in…it was just a disgraceful dump. The doors were falling off. The locks were broken. And I said, I got to fix it.” Later in the conversation he put it more simply: “The place was in terrible shape. I made it beautiful.”

The New York Post, which reported that the interview ran about 75 minutes, said Trump at one point had an aide bring in old photographs of the building so he could point out the damage. He described rebuilding as something close to a hobby: “It’s easy for me. It’s actually relaxing. You know, for a lot of people, it drives them crazy. For me, it’s relaxing.”

Who is paying for it

The sharpest criticism of the renovations has been about money, and Trump’s answer was that taxpayers are not footing the bill. On the new granite helipad on the South Lawn, built to handle the heavier new Marine One helicopters, he told TIME that Lockheed, the company that built the aircraft, paid for it, putting the cost at “close to $10 million.” Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky unit builds the VH-92A that now serves as Marine One.

On the ballroom, Trump said, “The ballroom had $400 million in it,” and the New York Post reported that the $400 million ballroom was paid for by private donations. The project replaced the East Wing, which was demolished to make room for it. According to the Post, the five-story, 90,000-square-foot building will include an updated military command center, a hospital, office space and a drone port, with completion expected in August 2027. “The steel goes up next week,” Trump said, as quoted by the Post.

The lawsuit that lost at the Supreme Court

The ballroom’s main opponent has been the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued to stop it. The group won at the D.C. Circuit, which ruled 2-1 earlier in August that approval belonged to Congress. But on Aug. 31, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that construction can continue while the litigation proceeds. The unsigned majority opinion found the Trust likely lacks standing to sue, rejecting the argument that a member’s displeasure with the project was a concrete injury: “mere offense, disagreement, or distaste” is not enough, the majority wrote. It expressly did not rule on whether the project is lawful.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the court’s three liberal justices, dissented and wrote that the construction was “likely unlawful.” The Trust’s president and CEO, Brent Leggs, said the group was “deeply disappointed.” The case continues in the lower courts, but the work does not stop.

Trump also refused to rule out demolishing the Kennedy Center, which is the subject of its own lawsuit. “It’s in terrible shape. I’d be willing to save it, but it’s in terrible, terrible shape. Only I can save it,” he told TIME. Asked whether he would commit to not demolishing it without the consent of Congress, he said: “I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”

The builder’s case

Critics see gold trim and a demolished wing. Trump sees a 233-year-old building that he says was literally shedding pieces of itself, and a president who made his fortune in New York real estate doing what he knows. “It’s what I do best,” he told TIME, according to the Post. The legal question of whether Congress had to sign off is still being litigated, but the money is private, the helipad was paid for by the contractor, and the Supreme Court has let the work go on.

And on the one room every American recognizes, the man accused of wanting to bulldoze history is the one insisting it be preserved.

If private donors are paying and the Supreme Court has let the work go on, the lawsuit is no longer about saving the White House; it’s about stopping Trump from fixing it.

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