Trump Goes Marble Shopping Amid Affordability Crisis

Donald Trump’s motorcade stopped at a random strip mall in Florida Friday morning so that the president could purchase marble and onyx for his increasingly expensive White House ballroom.

According to White House pool reports, “The motorcade arrived at a shopping center in Lake Worth, Florida at 9:46 AM.... The pool is told that POTUS is shopping at Arc Stone & Tile.” A White House official said that the president “is purchasing lake and onyx, at his own expense, for the White House ballroom.”

It’s perhaps no surprise that Trump wants marble in his White House ballroom. Trump first estimated the ballroom would cost only $200 million, but the president now claims the cost has skyrocketed to double that.

Trump has brought his longtime obsession with marble to his second term, pushing for it to appear just about everywhere. He urged the Federal Reserve building to be renovated with a marble facade, even as the architects wanted glass walls to indicate the agency’s transparency—and has since tried to use the renovation’s high cost as grounds to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

More recently, he redid the bathroom in the White House Lincoln Suite entirely in marble, and he has proposed marble armrests for the Kennedy Center, claiming it would be “unlike anything ever done or seen before!” (Perhaps there’s a reason no one wants marble armrests.)

It remains to be seen whether Trump will indeed pay for the marble himself—or if he’ll add it to the taxpayers’ bill.

A new year, a new lie: The White House is apparently banking that the American public won’t remember what Donald Trump said about his own health just three months ago.

Trump admitted several times on camera to receiving an MRI in October—as did his physician, who released a report in December officially declaring that Trump’s MRI came back “perfectly normal.” Despite that, Trump now claims that he didn’t get an MRI after all, and that the medical assessment instead amounted to a CT scan.

“It wasn’t an MRI,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in a story published Thursday. “It was less than that. It was a scan.”

The White House has never offered a reason as to why Trump received scans to begin with, but there are some key differences between the two medical assessments. An MRI utilizes magnetic fields to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. A CT scan, in comparison, is much faster as it uses X-rays to detect illness and injuries such as cancer, bone fractures, internal bleeding, or lung problems.

The president was remarkably cagey at the time about the scans he received at Walter Reed National Military Medical in early October. At first, he claimed his visit was little more than a “routine yearly checkup,” even though he already received his annual physical just six months prior.

There are also some unexplained discrepancies in the timeline of Trump’s visit to the military hospital. Former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served under former President Barack Obama, suggested that Trump could have gotten more work done than was initially revealed, pointing to just how much time he was spending at Walter Reed.

Trump is the oldest person to be elected president. In an interview with The Hill in November, Kuhlman noted that while it wouldn’t be unusual for a 79-year-old to require a second checkup, it was odd that Trump’s supposedly routine tests and reported scans amounted to a four-hour visit at the hospital, according to his schedule.

Trump’s health has been a topic of concern since he was on the campaign trail, when reports circulated that he couldn’t remember the contents of the cognitive exams he claimed to ace. Since then, the president has been spotted with odd discolorations on his hand, routinely appears discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders, and had a drooping expression during 9/11 ceremonies in September that onlookers suggested could be a sign of a stroke.

President Donald Trump has rung in 2026 by threatening war on two fronts—and picking a bizarre fight with American actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal.

Trump on New Year’s Eve trashed the actor’s decision to leave the United States and obtain French citizenship with his wife and two children. Calling the couple “two of the worst political prognosticators of all time,” Trump went on a long Truth Social rant attacking their move.

“Good News! George and Amal Clooney, two of the worst political prognosticators of all time, have officially become citizens of France which is, sadly, in the midst of a major crime problem because of their absolutely horrendous handling of immigration, much like we had under Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump wrote. “Remember when Clooney, after the now infamous debate, dumped Joe during a fundraiser, only to go onto the side of another stellar candidate, Jamala(K!), who is now fighting it out with the worst governor in the Country, including Tim Waltz, Gavin Newscum, for who is going to lead the Democrats to their future defeat. Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies. He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics.”

In a statement later Thursday to The Hollywood Reporter, Clooney hit back: “I totally agree with the current president. We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November.”

Trump’s Truth Social rant appears to have been a reaction to Clooney’s Tuesday cover story with Variety magazine, in which the actor expressed alarm over Trump’s America and the way news outlets like CBS have caved to the president’s MAGA agenda.

But if picking an inane fight with a popular American actor wasn’t enough for Trump, he has also spent his initial days of the new year threatening more intervention in two different countries.

In a 3 a.m. post on Friday, Trump threatened to intervene in Iran if the regime injured or killed any protesters, warning that the United States is “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

And Trump’s standoff with Venezuela continues. On New Year’s Eve, the U.S. military announced five more strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats. According to the Trump administration’s own numbers, this week’s attacks bring the total of publicly known strikes to 35, with at least 115 people killed.

A damning new report on Donald Trump’s health has stirred the American public, and even roused the president himself.

Practically nothing irks Trump more than stories about his age and his natural deterioration. But a Wall Street Journal article published Thursday—which includes an interview with Trump—revealed several new details about the president’s routine, depicting a 79-year-old man who has little well-informed consideration for the longevity of his body.

The piece received immediate backlash from Trump, who insisted on Truth Social shortly after its publication that he’s in “perfect health.”

“The White House Doctors have just reported that I am in ‘PERFECT HEALTH,’ and that I ‘ACED’ (Meaning, was correct on 100 percent of the questions asked!), for the third straight time, my Cognitive Examination, something which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take,” Trump posted.

Trump has an oddball history with reportedly “acing” cognitive exams. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump took several—but his recollections of the tests, which sometimes included fabricating questions that the tests’ authors claimed were never on the exams, called into question whether he had actually taken them at all.

“P.S., I strongly believe that anyone running for President, or Vice President, should be mandatorily forced to take a strong, meaningful, and proven Cognitive Examination,” he continued. “Our great Country cannot be run by ‘STUPID’ or INCOMPETENT PEOPLE! President DJT.”

But for all his blather, Trump does not appear to be in pristine condition. According to the Journal report, Trump is taking more aspirin than his doctors recommend, apparently under the belief that “nice, thin blood” is better than “thick blood.”

He also brushed off concerns that the odd discolorations that routinely appear on his hands were anything to be alarmed by, though his explanation for the spots only added more intrigue, as he claimed that they were the results of getting “whacked again by someone.” (CNN’s medical analyst noted that Trump’s outsize aspirin use could actually be behind the bruising, since too much aspirin intake can cause a person to bleed excessively.)

Trump denied the fact that he has repeatedly fallen asleep during critical public appearances—something that practically became a fixture of his first year back in office as he was caught dozing off roughly a dozen times. It’s happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the pope’s funeral.

“Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink,” Trump told the Journal.

But a final depiction of the president—from one of his supposed allies, RNC Chair Joe Gruters—really hammered home that the 79-year-old has been anything but delicate with his body, despite ongoing public concerns over his health.

Gruters claimed that he was “shocked” to see the scale at which Trump wolfs down McDonalds, including one instance in which he saw Trump consume “french fries, a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, a Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish” in one sitting.

President Donald Trump threatened to intervene in Iran if the regime hurts protesters, warning the United States is “locked and loaded.”

“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 2:58 a.m. on Friday morning. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Iran entered its sixth day of consecutive protests on Friday, as the people are fed up with the regime, soaring inflation, and the collapse of the Iranian rial. At least seven people have been killed so far, according to the AP.

Iranian officials have already responded to Trump’s threats by implying that the protests in recent days have been fomented by the United States—despite the protests’ widespread support—and warning the Trump administration about next steps.

“With the statements by Israeli officials and @realDonaldTrump, what has been going on behind the scenes is now clear,” Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, wrote on X. “Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests. The American people should know—Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”

Iran’s foreign minister, meanwhile, called Trump’s statement a “flagrant violation” of international law.

It’s impossible to root for anyone in this standoff, other than the people of Iran, but Trump threatening another international conflict—while we also appear to be walking into war with Venezuela—is certainly at least some cause for concern.