You may have seen that President Donald Trump has been doing some remodeling around the White House, including a new Rose Garden patio and so, so much gold in the Oval Office. My colleague Abdallah Fayyad recently wrote about how that remodeling isn’t just a presidential whim — instead, it’s the most immediate representation of Trump’s efforts to rebrand America in his image.

I sat down with Abdallah to talk about that rebranding for Vox’s daily newsletter Today, Explained. Our conversation is below, and you can also sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.

You write that Trump is remodeling America. What does that look like?

One thing that I’ve been interested in about Trump for a long time is his whole aesthetic, how tacky it can be, and how much he flaunts his wealth and power in the most ostentatious ways. We saw this in his first term, and we’re seeing it again in his second term, in how he’s imposing his particular style onto the American public, most recently with his makeover of the White House, all the gold........

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