Ex-Republican operative delivers stark prediction for Trump once reign ends

Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt on Wednesday anticipated what might happen once President Donald Trump's term is up.

Schmidt had a scathing response on his Substack to Trump's attempts to leave his imprint on the White House and Washington, D.C. He argued that, despite Trump's desires to leave a lasting impression, most of his legacy designs would ultimately be removed.

"Donald Trump would make Marie Antoinette blush," Schmidt said. "He is our American Caligula. Nero. Look at what he's done to the Oval Office, outside on the portico, connecting the residents to the West Wing. All of this, obviously, will need to be torn down. It's awful."

He also mentioned the White House's rose garden, which was paved over for a courtyard with gaudy statues. He slammed the request to Congress for $1 billion for taxpayers to fund "Trump's gilded parties."

"At the beginning, it was simply a straight up shadowy corruption deal," Schmidt said. "The world's richest companies were going to make tribute. Trump was going to pocket some of it and build the ballroom, explicitly, the taxpayer wasn't supposed to be on the hook — but now they are."

"The price tag keeps climbing, and climbing, and climbing," he added.

And the next president will have to face a serious challenge in the wake of Trump's reign — the National Mall.

"The idea that the next president can ignore what Donald Trump has done, regarding his defacements to either the White House, or to the surrounding area in Washington, is dead wrong," Schmidt argued. "And more than that, it won't be accepted by a score of tens of millions of Americans who appreciate the White House belongs to us, not to Donald Trump."

"It is not a castle, nor is it a coliseum for bread and circuses, it's the executive mansion," he said. "What Donald Trump has done... is an embarrassment. It's vulgar, like Lauren Sanchez Bezos and the Met Gala. An abomination. And the next president will need to act to knock down whatever it is Trump has built, wherever it is he has built it."

He slammed the idea that Trump would have airports named after him, and that his name would be removed from them, adding that his Victory Arch would not happen. Schmidt also said that the airplane gifted by the Qataris would also be taken from him.

"Trust me, if I'm president, by the time he gets back to Florida, there will be a team waiting for him to take the airplane," Schmidt explained. "None of it is going to stand. We will have, as Americans, a lot of very, very hard things to do. This is not hard. This is as easy as it gets."

Schmidt warned it was time for Congress to "stop a vandal" — Trump — and made an urgent plea for Democratic lawmakers to take a serious approach to withhold funding and take back control.

"Donald Trump has a Marie Antoinette complex, to say the least," he added. "What he's doing is trailer park trash, that's what Trump is. And, in the end, when he's gone, all of it's going. It must. And no candidate running for president stands a chance without this position."