Kaitlan Collins' Before & After Pics Of Trump's Rose Garden Are His Worst White House Renovation Yet
Not content merely to re-invent both himself and the federal government, Donald Trump is now transforming the White House in the way he sees fit — and one of his biggest media foes is quietly calling him out on the latest one. From the moment he re-took office, the president has been giving the Mar-a-Lago treatment to the People's House, starting with the tacky gilded Oval Office updates (gold cherubs! The FIFA World Cup trophy!) and expanding into an upcoming overhaul of the East Wing to create a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. (Though Trump has promised to foot most of the $200 million cost himself, some wonder if that money might be better spent on other things.) The latest renovation came together quickly over the summer of 2025: a redo of the famous White House Rose Garden. Where once an open expanse of lawn stood in the middle, a concrete pavilion with metal patio tables and chairs now resides. CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who has been locked in a bitter feud with Trump for some time, expressed her opinion of the change without a word, merely displaying before-and-after photos on her Instagram Stories feed.
The Rose Garden happens to be the site of one of Collins's most famous head-buttings with the president. Back in 2018, the journalist was barred from attending an event in the garden after asking Trump a series of questions at the end of an Oval Office photo op minutes earlier. "[T]hey thought the questions I had posed to the president were inappropriate and inappropriate for that venue," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer (per YouTube).
Critics compare the new Rose Garden to the Golden Arches...and other things
This marks the second time the White House Rose Garden has been Trumpified; the first renovation took place in 2020 at the direction of Melania Trump. It, too, received tons of backlash for the first lady's decision to relocate trees that had been planted by Jackie Kennedy. This new version was necessary, insisted President Trump, because the existing lawn "was always wet and damp and wet...and we couldn't use it really for the intended purpose" (per The Independent). But this new facelift is even less popular, and Kaitlan Collins' photo on X (formerly Twitter) said everything that needed to be said about the cold, uninviting plaza. Thousands agreed. One compared it to the outdoor seating at McDonald's: "Ba Da Ba Ba Ba...I'm hating it! Guess he draws his inspiration from his favorite restaurant." Some noted that the yellow-and-white-striped patio umbrellas looked almost identical to the ones by the pool at Trump's own Mar-a-Lago estate, and others thought they seemed...um...a bit suggestive.
If the topic of the garden overhaul comes up in a future White House press conference, it could easily turn into a new chapter in the feud between Collins and Karoline Leavitt. The CNN veteran and press secretary have engaged in a number of lively exchanges, to the delight of viewers who love a good showdown. In fact, we can just imagine Collins asking why the Trumps are dismantling Jackie Kennedy's botanical legacy. Leavitt would probably retort that the garden looks better than ever, and now she doesn't have to worry about her Jimmy Choos sinking into the mud. But if the questioning becomes more heated, Collins might find herself barred from the Mickey D's Rose Garden again.