The old one, from the Truman era, was a wall-mount that looked like standard commercial building. The new one is a floor-mount, floor-discharge with a tank. It looks like an ultra-low flow, the kind with a pressure tank. Considering presidential complaints I'm surprised. It also isn't one of those gold toilets recently in the news.

Can someone actually plumb a bathroom with gold? I saw a solid-copper spigot in the kitchen of Monet's house in Giverny.

no idea, but curious if plumbing in the white house falls under who as far as authority having jurisdiction? Is it the city of DC or is it exempted from permits and inspection? Is there some sort of special secret service plumbing team or do they hire Around The Clock Plumbing?

It's exempt, which can be a problem. Truman played the piano. He had one installed in an upper floor; a leg fell through the floor because a load-bearing wall had been removed. He moved out of the White House to the neighboring Blair House so major renovations could be done. The WH hired architects and engineers, and union workers, to see that it was done right. Congress was consulted. (Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate him there, killed a WH police officer, in 1950.)

My father was the chief water resources engineer at the Public Health Service in the '60s. Nixon was worried that his water was being poisoned so they asked the PHS to test. They sent my father. A limo took him to a back entrance. An aide took him to a safe, which had a 5-gallon bottle. Father told me that he wanted to tell them that the safest water in town came out of the tap: hundreds of thousands of other people were drinking it before it made it to the WH.

I think that the White House had it's own plumbers during Nixon administration.

[en.wikipedia.org]

[www.imdb.com]

They specialized in leaks only.