Former President Bill Clinton has found a new way to describe President Donald Trump’s paved-over Rose Garden, and it runs through the late showman Liberace’s bathroom.
Clinton delivered the line on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, while campaigning in Broward County, Fla., for David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor — his first midterm-election campaign appearance of the cycle. A clip of the remark spread widely days later, after political commentator Aaron Rupar posted it on X on Saturday, Oct. 24.
“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom,” Clinton said, as the crowd laughed.
The target of the joke was one of the most photographed patches of grass in Washington, until it stopped being grass. Trump paved over the Rose Garden in summer 2025, replacing the central lawn with a white stone patio, white tables, striped Mar-a-Lago-style umbrellas and statues of former presidents, and christened the space the “Rose Garden Club.” Many have remarked that it now resembles the patio at his Mar-a-Lago club more than a historic White House setting.
Trump has defended the redesign by saying the old lawn left events soaking wet and made life difficult for guests in high heels, an argument he laid out in a March 2025 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Clinton used the same garden in 1994 to host the leaders of Jordan and Israel for the signing of a peace agreement.
A Model Better Than the Original
Clinton told the audience he had no quarrel with a bigger dining space at the White House, where Trump razed the historic East Wing to make room for a ballroom. What he objected to was the price, which he put at $900 million, and the 250-foot arch Trump has proposed for Columbia Island — a structure Clinton mocked as a replica of the Arc de Triomphe designed to outdo the original, justified by a need to store drones. Trump has said the arch would also serve as a military storage facility. Contractors are set to begin work early in November.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., the Republican nominee for governor, “went along with all that,” Clinton said.
His criticism ranged well past the architecture. Clinton faulted the administration’s handling of longtime American allies, pointed to the suggestion that Canada become the 51st state, and accused Trump of abandoning Ukraine while embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also pressed the cost of living, telling the audience the real question for Florida is whether the people already living there can afford to stay.
Neck and Neck to Succeed DeSantis
Jolly, a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat, is running against Donalds to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, and polling shows the two close. Florida has not elected a Democratic governor since 1994, which makes the contest a measure of whether Democrats can win statewide again.
“I think we ought to give David Jolly a chance,” Clinton told the crowd at an interfaith service at the Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park. Clinton, 80, urged voters to pick a governor focused on their needs rather than on pleasing the president. His swing through South Florida also included a private Miami fundraiser that brought in $3 million for Jolly’s campaign.
The Jab Lands on Fox News
“Fox & Friends Weekend” aired the Liberace line on Saturday, Oct. 24, and the clip traveled from there. The response online split: some users cheered the punchline as one of Clinton’s sharpest in years, some rose to the defense of the late pianist’s memory, and others questioned whether a president with his own White House scandals was the right person to lodge the complaint.
Clinton is not the only former president needling the renovations this campaign season. Barack Obama ridiculed the gold-covered White House at a rally in Ohio, and former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb offered his own blunt verdict on the decor over the summer.
Trump held a rally of his own in Fort Myers, Fla., on Friday, Oct. 23, pushing support for Republican candidates. Both parties are now working South Florida hard as the governor’s race heads into its final stretch before November’s midterm elections.