The White House is plagued with cockroaches, mice and ants, building maintenance files have revealed.
Cockroach infestations were found in at least four parts of Donald Trump ’s official residence, while a colony of ants were living in Chief of Staff John Kelly’s office, according to hundreds of work orders obtained by NBC 4 Washington .
Mice were also discovered to be living in the Situation Room – the US President’s crisis management centre – and the White House Navy mess food area.
White House officials sent hundreds of requests to the General Services Administration (GSA), which helps maintain the White House and other government buildings, documents show.
Requests included the redecorating of National Security Adviser HR McMaster ’s office and a new toilet seat in a bathroom in the Oval Office.
Sean Spicer , former White House press secretary, had also asked for new furniture and pictures to be hung in his office shortly after Mr Trump’s inauguration.
MSNBC trolls Trump with a montage of Obama wishing everyone a 'Merry Christmas'
General Brian Miller, a former General Services Administration (GSA) inspector, told NBC maintaining the White House was an “enormous job”.
“GSA hires contractors and subcontractors for the work. Then the agency must watch over the contractors."
He added: “They are old buildings. Any of us who have old houses know old houses need a lot of work.”
After the president tweeted that voting by post would be "substantially fraudulent", Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet and referred readers to a site which explained how the claim was "unsubstantiated". Trump then said Twitter was "stifling free speech" and that he may have to shut it down, something which he would not have the power to do
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When author E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her, the president responded: “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?"
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Just before touching down at Stansted Airport for his state visit, Trump took time out to @ the London mayor Sadiq Khan on twitter. He said that Khan has done a "terrible job"as mayor and that he is a "stone cold loser"
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The president's official schedule sets aside the hours from 8 to 11am daily for "Executive Time". Further intermittent periods of "Executive Time" are scheduled throughout any given day, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. His duties in these hours have not been officially disclosed, though Axios reports that he spends them watching TV, reading the newspapers and tweeting
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With Mexico declining to pay for the wall, the president has faced difficulty in raising the required $5bn at home. Due to his demand that the money for the wall be included in the budget, and Congress's refusal, the government partially shut down on 22 December 2018. It remained shut for over a month, the longest period in history
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In this tweet from 13 November 2018, the president mocks Emmanuel Macron's suggestion of a "true, European army" by invoking the conflict between France and Germany in the world wars
The president has repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is a "rigged witch hunt"
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In the press conference that followed his landmark meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump stated that he saw no reason why Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US election. This contradicted a 2017 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found evidence of Russian interference in favour of Trump
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Following furious backlash in the US, the president claimed that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not have been Russia who meddled in the 2016 US election. As to why he would have intended to use such bizarre phrasing, he did not comment
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The president coloured in the US flag wrongly during a visit to a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added a blue stripe where in tradition, and statute, there have been only white and red stripes
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The president announced on Twitter that he was appointing Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, much to the surprise of then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
While addressing the issue of black athletes not standing for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, the president made reference to his catchphrase from reality TV show "The Apprentice": you're fired!
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Ever one for diplomacy, the president reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole countries". Asked to confirm this when meeting with Nigeria's President Buhari, Trump stated that there are "some countries that are in very bad shape".
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Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
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At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump couldn’t help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of “The Apprentice” — which buoyed Trump’s celebrity status years ago
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Early in his presidency, Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the “worst call” he had had so far
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Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Trump’s travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administration’s argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security
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After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the president picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there
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During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be “little Rocket Man” as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea
After the attack on the London Bridge, Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticising Khan for saying there was “no reason to be alarmed” after the attack. Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control
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Never one not to mock his enemies, Trump mocked MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to “join” him. He noted that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at the time, and that he said no
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Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer
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Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet
Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of “fake news”
Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey landed him with a federal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election that has caused many a headache for the White House. The White House initially said that the decision was made after consultation from the Justice Department. Then Mr Trump himself said that he had decided to fire him in part because he wanted the Russia investigation Mr Comey was conducting to stop
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Just three months into his presidency, Trump admitted that being president is harder than he thought it would be. Though Trump insisted on the 2016 campaign trail that doing the job would be easy for him, he admitted in an interview that living in the White House is harder than running a business empire
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Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Obama had not, in fact, done so
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Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.)
Just days after taking office, Trump’s White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didn’t mention “jews” or even the word “jewish” in the written statement
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Trump’s inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didn’t, the day was very dreary
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Despite the large number of requests in 2017, the Obama administration filed a similar number in its last year in office, NBC reports.
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