A replica Oval Office near the White House just got a Trump makeover

WASHINGTON (AP) — A replica Oval Office on display near the White House now looks exactly like President Donald Trump's. But it is not the blingy version he is currently using.

Visitors starting Thursday will experience the mock Oval Office as it was in the Republican president's first term, until it is redecorated again next year to incorporate the golden touches and other flourishes Trump brought to the workspace after he returned to power in January.

“Just like the White House itself, our Oval Office is a living space, so it changes and evolves as the actual Oval Office changes,” Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, said Wednesday as he led The Associated Press on a tour of the space as it was being revamped.

The mock-up is inside “The People's House: A White House Experience,” an educational center the association opened last year one block west of the Executive Mansion.

Few regular people ever see, let alone step inside, the real Oval Office, for security and other reasons. But the true-to-life model offers visitors a chance to see and experience it. It will be updated to match the decor of every sitting president.

When the historical association opened the center last year, the replica Oval Office looked like Democrat Joe Biden’s office because he was the president at the time.

The association has to get copies made of every item in the real Oval Office and that process takes time, McLaurin said. He also preferred to wait until there was a “critical mass" of items instead of doing a slow, piece-by-piece makeover.

Trump decorated his first-term Oval Office with a beige-patterned rug from the Ronald Reagan era, gold-colored draperies from Bill Clinton's tenure and a lighter, floral wallpaper that replaced a striped wall covering installed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump kept these same designs for his second term.

Trump also kept the Resolute Desk, which has been used by nearly every president since it was gifted to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by Queen Victoria. It was built using wood from the British ship HMS Resolute.

Trump hung a large portrait of George Washington above the fireplace, flanked by portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. He also displayed portraits of Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin and had busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill on tables on either side of the fireplace.

The association is in the process of reproducing items in Trump's second-term office even as he continues to make changes by adding gilding, artwork and other objects.

“So probably in a year or a little more, we'll be able to make that transition when we have all of those items ready,” McLaurin said.

The Biden items will be donated to his foundation for possible use in his future presidential library, and the same will be done in the future with the items reproduced for Trump's offices.

The White House Historical Association was created in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that receives no government funding. It raises money mostly through private donations and merchandise sales, including an annual Christmas ornament.

While a group of children look on, Luke Boorady works with a lamp during work to transition a replica of the White House Oval Office from the days of former President Joe Biden with President Donald Trump's decor, at the White House Historical Association in Washington, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

John Michael Cannette,10, right, of Sumrall, Miss., sits behind the Resolute desk as White House Historical Association President Stewart McLaurin, left, talks to a group of tourists, during work to transition a replica of the White House Oval Office from the days of former President Joe Biden with President Donald Trump's decor, at the White House Historical Association in Washington, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

People work during an effort to transition a replica of the White House Oval Office from the days of former President Joe Biden with President Donald Trump's decor, at the White House Historical Association in Washington, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

White House Historical Association President Stewart McLaurin talks during an interview, during work to transition a replica of the White House Oval Office from the days of former President Joe Biden with President Donald Trump's decor, at the White House Historical Association in Washington, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Thom Tillis isn't holding back during his final year in Washington.

“I'm sick of stupid,” the two-term Republican from North Carolina said from the Senate floor recently as he derided President Donald Trump 's advisers for stoking a potential U.S. military takeover in Greenland.

It was just one of several moments during the opening weeks of 2026 when Tillis, who isn't seeking reelection, seemed unconstrained by the anxieties that weigh down many of his GOP colleagues who are loath to cross the White House for fear of triggering a political backlash.

He's one of just two Republicans, along with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who participated in a congressional delegation to Denmark this week while Trump threatens to seize Greenland. He was quick to criticize the Justice Department's investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. As Trump and his allies try to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, Tillis backed the eventual display of a plaque honoring police who defended the Capitol that day.

He has shown particular frustration with Trump's top aides, notably deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.

“I don't want some staffer telling me what my position is on something,” he said after Miller gave a forceful interview on CNN saying Greenland “should be part of the United States.”

“He made comments out of his depth,” Tillis added.

The moves reflect the sense of freedom lawmakers often feel when they know they won't have to face voters again. They've helped attract swarms of reporters who follow Tillis through the halls of Congress as he offers candid thoughts on news of the day. And they've won support from the handful of other Republicans who sometimes cross Trump, including Murkowski, who called out “good speech!” as she passed him in the Capitol following his floor remarks on Greenland.

For the 65-year-old Tillis, who has won elections in one of the most politically competitive states, the approach is notable for the way in which he's pushing back against the White House. He's hardly staking out a position as a never-Trumper and repeatedly — often effusively — expresses support for the president.

Rather, he's targeting much of his criticism at senior White House aides, sometimes raising questions about whether Trump is receiving the best advice at a consequential moment in his presidency as the GOP enters a challenging election year.

“I really want this president to be very, very successful,” Tillis said this week. “And a part of his legacy is going to be based on picking and choosing the right advice from people in his administration.”

Heading into the midterms, Tillis said, “I want to create a better environment for Republicans to win.”

Tillis, who had a challenging childhood involving multiple moves, worked at an accounting and consulting firm before entering politics. He was the speaker of North Carolina's House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. He said this week that he approaches his concerns from a business perspective.

“Sometimes there's just things that people need to say, ‘not a good idea, not in our best interest, hard to implement,” he said. “I probably should have started by saying that’s what I did in the private sector for about 25 years.”

Beyond Miller, Tillis has raised questions about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's immediate response to the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. Hours after the shooting, while an FBI investigation was still unfolding, Noem defended the officer and said Good “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.”

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill the next day, Tillis said he was “surprised by the level of certainty in her comments” and suggested such rhetoric influenced Trump, who was also quick to defend law enforcement.

“She's advising the president so the president's comments had to have come I assume through the advice of the secretary,” he said.

Tillis' balancing act was on particularly vivid display earlier this month on the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, when he helped broker the deal to publicly show the plaque honoring officers that was held up by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Speaking from the Senate floor, he called the attack “one of the worst days in my 11 years in the U.S. Senate.”

He lauded the staff and U.S. Capitol police who defended lawmakers and helped ensure that Congress ultimately certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. But he also struck fiercely partisan tones, blaming Democrats for embracing a movement to defund the police and criticizing media coverage of protests that turned violent during the summer of 2020.

Tillis framed Jan. 6 as a “wonderful stress test for democracy” before arguing that the Biden administration went “overboard” by prosecuting “people who were dumb enough to walk into the building but they weren't the leaders.” He then pivoted to criticism of Trump's sweeping pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, including those who attacked police.

But even then, he didn't directly blame Trump, again focusing on his advisers.

“The president, on the advice of somebody in the White House — and I hope I find out the name of that person — also pardoned criminals who injured police officers and destroyed this building,” Tillis said. “If you had that happen to your office or your business, would you think well they were just a little hotheaded and let them go and not prosecute them? Or would you hold them accountable for destroying the citadel of democracy?”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Tillis' assessment of Trump's aides. The senator rejects any suggestion that he's stepped up his criticism because of his impeding retirement, calling the notion “hysterical.”

His relationship with Trump hit a low point last summer when he opposed the president's sweeping tax and spending cuts package. Trump accused Tillis of seeking publicity and said on social media that the senator was a “talker and complainer, NOT A DOER.” Tillis announced his retirement soon after voting against the measure, one of only two Senate Republicans to do so.

Trump has been more sanguine in response to Tillis' more recent comments. Asked this week about the senator's criticism of the Fed probe, Trump said, “That's why Thom's not going to be a senator any longer, I guess.”

“Look, I like Thom Tillis,” Trump said. “But he's not going to be a senator any longer because of views like that.”

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.

FILE -Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks during a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 13, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Sarah Silbiger/Pool via AP, File)

FILE - Wearing a beaded bolo around a pin that says "United States Senate," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., listens to thanks from members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, after the passage of a bill granting the tribe with federal recognition, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)