President Trump used a small White House pen to make a larger point about fiscal common sense, turning a cabinet meeting tangent into a lesson about waste and better value. He contrasted a $4 billion Federal Reserve building with what he says he could have done for a fraction of the cost, and he explained why he swapped ornate, expensive pens for customized Sharpies. The exchange went viral because it was both practical and plainspoken.
Trump grabbed attention by linking a tiny everyday object to big-dollar decisions. He criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the new headquarters cost, saying, “If it was properly done and planned, you would have done that building for — I would have done it — for $25 million, and it would be better,” and used the pen as his prop. The point was simple: you can get better results without blowing up the budget.
He actually reached for the marker during the meeting and told the room, “See this pen right here? This pen is an interesting example.” Trump explained the motivation came from the old Oval Office pens, which were flashy but impractical and often ran out of ink. He felt bad handing them out like trophies to dozens of people each time he signed something.
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He framed the swap to Sharpies as a straightforward money-saver. “It’s the same thing,” he told the crowd. “This pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well; I like it.”
Trump went on to describe the earlier situation: “I came here, and they have thousand-dollar pens, and you hand pens out, you’re signing, and you’re handing them out, you’re handing them out with all these people, sometimes you have 30, 40 people, and they were a thousand dollars apiece,” he said. He painted a picture of gorgeous gold and silver pens being handed to kids who had no clue what they were holding. The image underscored his point about optics and waste.
He kept it candid and a little self-effacing, saying he felt “guilty” about the excess. “I want to save money,” he said plainly, framing the switch as responsible stewardship rather than petty thrift. He added the practical gripe that the expensive pens “didn’t write well.”
Still, Trump made clear he wasn’t going to carry a branded Sharpie into high-stakes signings without a tweak. He mused, “I could do like Biden did, you know, give it to somebody else to sign or an autopen?” and then told how he reached out to the pen maker. The exchange moved him from problem spotting to problem solving.
He recounted the conversation: “This is when I called the guy. I said, ‘I’d like to use your pen, but I can’t have a grey thing with a big ‘S’ on it saying ‘Sharpie’ as I’m signing a trillion dollar airplane contract to buy brand-new fighter jets – brand new B-2 bombers, of which we just ordered plenty – I can’t do that with the press, use your pen, but I like the pen the best.” The line captured both the comedic detail and the substantive concern about presentation. The maker offered adjustments rather than resistance.
“Well, I could make it nicer,” the representative told him, and Trump pushed the idea until they landed on a solution. “I said, ‘What can you do?’ He said, ‘I’ll paint it black.’ I said, ‘That’s nice,’” Trump recalled, signaling how small fixes can solve perceived image problems without wasting money. The conversation even included an offer to add a gold-painted White House and signature: “in gold, almost real gold, not bad.”
After telling the story, Trump emphasized its spontaneity: “By the way, this was not staged.” He closed by tying the pen anecdote back to the bigger budget argument, saying, “I just saw the pen sit there; I thought that this is an example of how $25 million spent by me at the Federal Reserve building would be a better job than the $4 billion that they’re spending.” The anecdote landed as a neat example of his approach to cutting excess and insisting on value.
