Enrichment Arts & Culture

Melania Trump’s war with famous historian goes viral

by Anagha Srikanth | August 9, 2021 | Aug. 09, 2021

Story at a glance

  • Presidential historian Michael Beschloss has been a vocal critic of Melania Trump’s redesign of the White House Rose Garden.
  • The former first lady, who renovated the garden and removed several crab apple trees, fired back online.
  • Critics and supporters weighed in on the design of the historical garden.

The Office of Melania Trump came back swinging at presidential historian Michael Beschloss over his criticism of the former first lady’s redesign of the Rose Garden. 

“[Beschloss] has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy. The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses. His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian,” the office said in a Tweet, responding to a post by Beschloss marking one year since the “evisceration” of the White House Rose Garden, as he called it. 

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Trump replaced colorful tulips and other bright perennials and annuals in the original design by Rachel Lambert Mellon with white and pastel roses and sharp boxwood hedges. The photo shared by the former first lady’s office showed a smattering of pink roses along the newly installed limestone walkway around the perimeter of the center lawn, which the White House said was part of changes to make the garden more accessible. Ten crabapple trees had also been removed, reportedly to be cared for at the off-campus White House gardening center with plans to replant them elsewhere on the grounds. 

 

The changes were met with a good deal of criticism when the garden was unveiled last year, including by Beschloss. In January, he told MSNBC that the crab apple trees were pulled out because President Trump wanted a shot of him and Melania walking through the colonnade to the Rose Garden during the 2020 Republican National Convention.

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“This whole place was transformed. essentially for a camera shot. They claimed it was, you know, to improve irrigation for some other reason. The result is here’s something that’s not the most important thing the Bidens have to do but I sure do hope they will at the earliest convenient opportunity transform the rose garden into the way it’s supposed to look and has since 1962. With all that history,” he told MSNBC at the time.

A fact check from Reuters noted that all of the roses planted by first ladies between 1913 to 1962 were removed by Jackie Kennedy when she redesigned the garden and the crab apple trees she planted had been replaced several times over the years. 

Still, a petition asking the Biden administration to restore Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, especially the trees, has garnered more than 80,000 signatures in the past few months.  

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