WATCH: Trump Signs Proclamation Protecting the Oval Office as a National Monument

President Donald Trump on Thursday issued and signed a proclamation he says will preserve the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as a national monument.

The executive order, published online by the White House, was Trump’s “first official action after his party was swept aside in midterm elections on Tuesday,” several news outlets reported.

However, there was a caveat, news outlets noted.

“The action does not prevent future presidents from restyling the iconic office that Mr. Trump has filled to the brim with gold flourishes, nor does it prevent a successor from rolling back the proclamation itself. Mr. Trump himself has reversed national monument designations made by his predecessors,” CBS reported.

The president described the Oval Office order in “expansive terms,” PBS reported.

“It will not be allowed to be touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people, in order to build something in a slightly different shape,” Trump said. “We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol, like the White House itself.”

The proclamation itself, however, does give considerable leeway to the discretion of future presidents.

“Nothing in this proclamation shall be construed to restrict the President’s authority to redecorate the monument, select furnishings, or make ordinary operational and security modifications that do not substantially impair the monument’s historic structure or architectural character,” it states.

The proclamation also orders the Secretary of the Interior to manage the Oval Office and requires “documentation, review, and consideration of alternatives before any action that would substantially alter or demolish the monument.”

Trump separately said any major changes would need review from Congress, though such a requirement is not in the document’s text, PBS noted.

“If they want to say, ‘Let’s not have oval anymore, let’s make it square,’ what happens is they have to go back to Congress and hopefully the Congress, the people in Congress, will be smart enough not to let that happen,” Trump told reporters.

It was the third day this week that Trump delivered remarks related to the former real estate moguls pet projects in Washington.

On Wednesday Trump gathered reporters as he signed the final beam being hoisted during construction of his ballroom project. On Monday, he went to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to deliver his final pitch for the midterm elections and to talk about his renovation of the landmark.

As he talked about his interior decorating decisions before signing the proclamation, Trump highlighted new chandeliers that he says were installed in the Cabinet Room to address “very bad lighting.”

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The president has made numerous additions to the Oval Office that include gold wall appliqués, gold-framed portraits and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

PBS also noted in its coverage the opposition to some of the president’s construction projects, writing:

His effort to preserve changes at the White House comes as Democrats gear up for new scrutiny of Trump. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a flurry of letters Thursday to known donors to Trump’s ballroom, demanding that they provide information or face “alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

Trump did not say in detail what he was hoping to prevent but suggested that the Oval Office might face a threat to dramatically alter its structural design on day in the future.

“If anybody ever decides to come and start knocking down walls, you call me wherever I may be,” the president said, “and I’ll come back here and I’ll make sure it never happens.”

 Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.