President Donald Trump on Saturday put a lofty spin on his White House renovations—namely, claiming that, by renovating a bathroom in the White House, he is “saving the heritage of this country.”

During his speech at the Kennedy Center Honors Dinner, Trump dwelled for a while on what, evidently, matters to him more than most else: his mission to force his dictator chic design taste upon the People’s House.

Trump specifically mentioned his renovation to the bathroom of the Lincoln Suite, in the southeast corner of the White House’s second floor. In October, Trump announced that he had refurbished the bathroom with white-and-black-marble.

Prior to his intervention, Trump said on Saturday, “It was the worst job. It was done in—many years ago. It was done during, actually, the Truman administration, with very cheap, green tile. That wasn’t Lincoln.”

Now the bathroom is “beautiful,” he mused, done in Paradiso marble.

The president acknowledged criticisms he received for the vanity project. “People said, ‘Oh, why is he wasting time?’”

He continued, “That’s not wasting time, that’s saving our heritage. You know, many, many things like that, it’s saving the heritage of this country,” to which the audience applauded.

In reality, Trump’s renovations seem more poised to defile than to preserve history (hence the widespread opposition among preservationist groups—not to mention the public—to the administration demolishing the East Wing to accommodate his gargantuan planned ballroom).

The grandiosity with which Trump described his Lincoln Bathroom renovation this weekend is consistent with his description of the renovation when it was first unveiled, at which time he said the new marble is “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.” Historians and designers dismissed the claim.

Edward Lengel, former chief historian of the White House Historical Association, told The New York Times, “It doesn’t look anything like 1860s interiors to me.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to great lengths Saturday to avoid saying whether the military will release the full, unedited video of its controversial September 2 double-tap strikes on a boat it claims was carrying drugs in the Caribbean.

Thus far, only footage of the first strike has been released to the public. The full unreleased video, however, reportedly goes on to show two survivors clinging to the wreckage, before they were killed by a second strike that legal experts have described as a war crime or murder.

Democratic lawmakers who viewed the full video of the strikes, which killed 11 people, this week said it was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service” and that it “confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities.”

When asked Wednesday if his administration would release footage of the second strike, President Donald Trump’s answer was simple: “Whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.”

His defense secretary was much more evasive.

“When can we see that video? When will you release it?” Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson asked Hegseth at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

Hegseth was noncommittal. “We’re reviewing it, right now, to make sure, sources, methods—I mean, it’s an ongoing operation—TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures]. We’ve got operators out there doing this right now. So, whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible about. So, we’re reviewing that right now.”

Later on, Tomlinson asked whether Hegseth will release the full video at all. Hegseth responded, again, without answering. “We are reviewing it right now,” he said.

“Is that a yes or no?” Tomlinson pressed.

Hegseth strung together the following response: “The most important thing to me are the ongoing operations in the Caribbean with our folks that use bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures in the process. I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else, so we’re reviewing a process and we’ll see.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington is calling for the release of Wilmer Toledo-Martinez, an immigrant who she says was mauled last month by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement attack dog in Vancouver, Washington.

According to Murray’s office, Toledo-Martinez is an immigrant with no criminal convictions, who came to the United States at 15 years old. His wife and three children—ages 2, 3, and 7, respectively—are all U.S. citizens.

On November 14, Toledo-Martinez reportedly answered a knock at his door to find a federal immigration agent posing as a construction worker, who claimed to have hit his car.

Toledo-Martinez went outside and was asked his name. When he turned to go inside to retrieve his insurance and ID, another agent is said to have released the dog, which bit him repeatedly, leaving injuries that were later captured in graphic images provided by Murray. His wife and two youngest children reportedly watched as this occurred.

In a video, seemingly taken moments after the attack, Toledo-Martinez is seen on the ground in handcuffs as an agent with a K9 stands over him. Another agent in a neon vest asks Toledo-Martinez his name before moving him into a truck.

On The Don Lemon Show, Toledo-Martinez’s lawyer, Olia Catala, said her client was denied immediate medical care. He was only later taken to a hospital, she said, after he begged them to do so and heard one of the agents say, “I’m not........

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