Melania Trump has attacked an NBC presidential historian who bemoaned what he called the former first lady’s “evisceration” of the White House Rose Garden.
Employing the type of bombast normally associated with her husband, who is banned from Twitter, Ms Trump said Michael Beschloss should “never be trusted as a professional historian” after he posted a photo of the White House lawn where the famous flowers used to bloom.
"Evisceration of White House Rose Garden was completed a year ago this month, and here was the grim result – decades of American history made to disappear," Mr Beschloss tweeted on Saturday, sharing an image from above the garden.
After Mr Beschloss’ Tweet went viral, the Office of Melania Trump posted a photo of the garden from a different angle showing a line of flowering bushes.
Mr Beschloss had “proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy”, the tweet said.
“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.”
In her final months in the White House, Ms Trump ordered the “renovation” of the Rose Garden, removing the large flowerbed that had been a feature of the White House grounds since the early 1960s when Jackie Kennedy oversaw its planting.
The move was widely decried as akin to cultural vandalism, and was blasted for taking place as the US was in the grips of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In August 2020, Ms Trump unveiled the new-look garden, which saw the vibrant flower beds and trees replaced with white and pastel flowers and a paved walkway.
The revamp was needed, her spokesperson said, to “fulfill the dynamic needs of the modern presidency”.
The Rose Garden forms the backdrop of a large number of presidential press conferences and White House events.
