Donald Trump's Oval Office bling exposed as knockoff £43 plastic sprayed gold

Donald Trump’s boast that he has turned the White House into a “24 karat” spectacle has been spectacularly rubbished after sleuths discovered his decorations are knockoff £43 plastic moulds sprayed gold.

The president has repeatedly bragged that his Oval Office redecoration was dripping in genuine gold. But eagle-eyed DIY enthusiasts have discovered the centrepiece wall coverings and fireplace fittings came not from a luxury design house, but from America’s answer to B&Q.

The trimmings, marketed as “polyurethane appliqué & onlay moulding,” are sold by DIY giant Home Depot and retail for just $58.07 (£42.92). The firm’s billionaire founders were staunch Trump backers, with co-founder Bernie Marcus, who died last year, counted among the president’s biggest donors.

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Despite the bargain origins, Trump has long insisted his gilded Oval Office is the real deal.

White House flunkies once claimed the gold features were “of the highest quality” and that the president had personally footed the bill.

Trump has never been shy about extolling his supposed treasure trove. Of his redesign, he declared: “It becomes more and more beautiful with love, with great love and 24 carat gold that always helps to.”

Doubling down on his claims of authenticity, he said: “Throughout the years, people have tried to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold, and they've never been able to do it. You've never been. And look at that. Look. You've never been able to match gold with gold paint.”

Trump reeled off a glittering inventory of items he said had been added under his watch. Among them were vermeil figurines, gold medallions adorning the fireplace, Rococo mirrors hung over the doors, and eagles perched proudly on side tables. Even the television remote, he boasted, had been wrapped in gilt.

Delicate cherubs were fixed in place over the Oval Office doorways, a choice Trump described as more than decorative. “It's angels. They say angels bring good luck, and we need a lot of luck in this country with what they've done over the last four years,” he told Fox host Laura Ingraham.

The gold fever extended even to his desk, where a weighty paperweight stamped with his own name sat gleaming.

But online detectives, armed with catalogues and a sharp eye, were quick to expose the makeover as a cut-price con. They found the so-called gold furniture was mass-produced Home Depot plastic.

The revelation has sparked a wave of ridicule across social media. One user on X sneered: “Petty is the idiot who adorned the Oval Office in gold, spray-painted, plastic Home Depot castings.”

Another piled on: “The only thing tackier than this is the stupid gold leaf overlay s**t that they found at Home Depot and stuck on the walls of the Oval Office.”

The mockery even moved into political debate. When Trump’s controversial Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr hailed the president’s “commitment to Gold Standard Science,” one critic snapped back: “The only ‘gold standard’ I've seen is the tacky gold Home Depot bric-a-brac all over the Oval Office. The rest has been hotly disproven garbage science.”

For a man who once made his fortune branding everything from skyscrapers to steaks with his name, the discovery that his prized Oval Office décor is spray-painted plastic has proved a brutal humiliation. Instead of the lavish symbol of power he wanted, Trump’s Oval Office may now be remembered as the political world’s gaudiest DIY bodge.