Trump legal advisor Alina Habba was trashed by critics and lauded by MAGA after she “cracked the case” of former President Joe Biden’s “fake oval office” in a video she posted Tuesday.
“You guys, I just finished a show. Look at the room that they put me in,” Habba said in the clip, panning around the space. “We’re in Biden’s fake Oval Office, everybody.”
Habba sat at a desk in front of a paneled wall adorned with a White House logo and an American flag, telling users: “I now know why, I now get it.”
She then pointed out various fixtures in the room, including a teleprompter, before taking a shot at Biden’s presidency: “There is a screen, teleprompter to the face. All I can say is the last administration was a disgratz [sic].”
Habba’s post was seized on by some users and folded into the broader MAGA narrative that painted the Biden administration as a stage-managed illusion, stemming from scrutiny of the former president’s ability to carry out his duties pertaining to
Critics, meanwhile, were quick to trash the discovery:
New York Post’s Washington reporter Steven Nelson noted the site was in an auditorium “next door” to the White House.
The room in question is a frequently used media staging area within the White House complex, at the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Since 2012, South Court Auditorium has been a go-to venue for high-profile White House events that require additional television coverage and media optics. The auditorium replaced the older and less accessible Room 450 and, according to a Washington Examiner profile of the location from 2021, features a rotating series of set designs.
Former President Barack Obama and even President Donald Trump, during his first term, made use of the South Court to roll out some announcements.