‘Not His!’: Trump’s Latest Power Move Sparks Outrage After Insiders Leak His Shocking Habit of Swiping Priceless White House Antiques on a Whim, Even Taking from Melania
The White House isn’t a hotel suite, golf club, or one of Donald Trump’s private estates.
But critics say the president often treats it as just another one of his properties.
Whether it’s artwork, furniture, historic décor, or championship memorabilia, Trump has repeatedly turned up at the center of stories involving coveted items that end up in his possession.
His latest request, involving one of the government’s most recognizable paintings, has critics again accusing him of acting as if everything belongs to him.
During an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed that Trump personally asked to move a treasured portrait of Alexander Hamilton from the Treasury to the White House.
“Mr. Bessent, I’d like to take some things from the Treasury Department and bring them to the White House,” Bessent recalled Trump saying.
Bessent explained that the portrait—a reproduction of John Trumbull’s famous Alexander Hamilton painting in New York City Hall—originally hung outside his Treasury Department office in the “Fortress of Finance” headquarters before Trump requested its relocation to the Roosevelt Room.
“So the president sent over some beautiful gold gilt for my office,” Bessent explained. “So it wasn’t exactly an even trade.” Watters joked that Trump “usually comes out on top.” Bessent agreed: “Not usually—always!”
The two intended the exchange as banter. Many saw it differently.
The Hamilton portrait isn’t just another painting.
Hamilton served as the nation’s first Treasury secretary, making his likeness one of the department’s most symbolic pieces of artwork.
Trump’s fascination with Hamilton runs deeper. In 2025, he unveiled a gold-framed painting titled “The Tariff Men,” placing himself alongside Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley, the Independent Institute reported.
His advisers have invoked Hamilton to defend the president’s tariff policies.
The Hamilton painting isn’t the first government item Trump has openly admitted taking.
In June 2026, Trump revealed he relocated a grandfather clock from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office into the redesigned White House Cabinet Room.
“So as president, you have the power—if I go into the State Department, or Department of Commerce or Treasury—if I see anything that I like, I’m allowed to take it,” Trump said before recounting how he reminded Rubio, “Marco, I have the right to do it.”
He later described the antique timepiece as Rubio’s “contribution” to the Cabinet Room.
One Daily Beast reader wrote, “Trump does not care that the WH is not his house!!!”
The criticism has only intensified following new allegations about Trump’s personal living quarters inside the White House.
According to excerpts from Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, an upcoming book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, residence staff routinely cleaned up potato chip bags, Starbucks wrappers, ice cream cartons, and spilled drinks from Trump’s bedroom after his late-night television sessions.
The authors also claim Trump insisted on carpeting his private bathroom, creating maintenance problems as staff rotated soaked carpet sections to prevent mold.
Perhaps the most talked-about allegation involves Melania Trump. The book claims the couple kept separate bedrooms, with Melania in the larger suite while Trump chose another nearby.
He, then, moved furnishings into his room even after staff reminded him several pieces had been chosen by the first lady. Haberman and Swan write the president brushed off those concerns because he wanted what staff called “the better room.”
That image contrasts sharply with the luxury brand Trump has spent decades building.
The Hamilton story comes weeks after another incident involving an object Trump seemed reluctant to part with. Following Chelsea’s win over Paris Saint-Germain in the FIFA Club World Cup final, cameras caught Trump slipping one of the winner’s gold medals into his suit jacket pocket, and the clip spread online.
It was later reported FIFA President Gianni Infantino had handed Trump the medal to hold while presenting awards. Trump also revealed FIFA told him he could keep the original Tiffany & Co. crafted Club World Cup trophy in the Oval Office while the champions received a replica.
Newsbreak readers connected the dots.
“Such a clepto,” one person joked. Another wrote, “Trump takes ‘because he can.’ That’s the way he feels about our country, too. No, even the world.” A third added, “He did this at the US Embassy in France his 1st term. Not new.”
Taken separately, each incident might be dismissed as harmless or one of the unusual privileges of being president.
Taken together, critics say they tell a familiar story: from relocating historic portraits and government antiques to holding onto trophies and allegedly claiming the “better room” inside the White House, the president behaves less like a temporary steward of the people’s house and more like its permanent owner.