Melania Trump's Rose Garden

About

Melania Trump's Rose Garden refers to the renovations to the White House rose garden First Lady Melania Trump completed in late August 2020. Images of the new garden sparked a viral debate online over the design. Although some approved of the redesign, many took issue over the removal of trees planted by Jackie Kennedy and the lack of color.

Origin

On August 22nd, 2020, Melania Trump^[1] tweeted, "Excited to honor history & celebrate the future in our beautiful @WhiteHouse Rose Garden this evening. Thank you to all who helped renew this iconic & truly gorgeous space" and attached images (shown below). The tweet gained over 136,000 likes and 31,600 retweets in two days.

Spread

On August 22nd, 2020, Twitter users began responding both positively and negatively to the changes. Twitter user @stonecold2050^[7] tweeted a photo of the garden captioned, "Oh look at Melania's renovated rose garden at the White House. Does anyone else see how the small bushes spell KKK in rows?" (shown below). The controversial tweet gained over 3,200 likes and 3,400 retweets in two days.

Twitter user @Really_Sharon tweeted a GIF of a woman cutting rose bushes captioned, "Melania redesigning the Rose Garden. #RoseGarden #MelaniaRuinsEverything" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 2,300 likes in two days.

The next day, Twitter user @sirrsss^[2] posted before and after photos of the garden captioned, "When Lana Del Rey said, 'My rose garden dreams, set on fire by fiends' she was referring to Melania Trump #RoseGardenMassacre" (shown below, left). The tweet received over 1,000 likes and 300 retweets in a day. That same day, Redditor melinda2020 posted an image of Jackie Kennedy to r/politicalhumor^[3] with the text, "what did that bitch do to my rose garden?" (shown below, right). The post accumulated over 180 points (98% upvoted) in a day.

That same day, Redditors reposted articles regarding the garden to r/politics^[4] and r/conservative.^[5] Twitter user @johncardillo^[6] tweeted, "Biden/Harris sucks so badly that the Dems new line of attack is, 'but Trump removed a tree from the Rose Garden.'" and acquired over 4,900 likes in a day (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @ChHaifley^[8] compared the garden to Gorky Park in Moscow and gained over 6,700 likes and 4,200 retweets in a day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References