White House Down
Donald Trump Attacks 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Donald Trump has always had a weakness for gilt, glitter, and excess. But even by his standards of tacky grandiosity, the razing of the White House East Wing to build himself a $300 million monument to marble and mirrors represents a new low in narcissistic architecture.
The man who gold-plated his Manhattan penthouse, who slapped his name in giant letters on buildings from Atlantic City to Azerbaijan, who turned the Oval Office into a gaudy shrine of presidential portraits and golden flourishes, is now literally demolishing American history to construct what amounts to a private party palace. And he’s doing it with the subtlety of a wrecking ball through a Fabergé egg.
It began, as Trump’s schemes so often do, with a lie wrapped in superlatives. Last July, standing before reporters with that peculiar combination of bluster and boredom he reserves for pronouncing his latest “tremendous” idea, Trump announced his ballroom plan. It would be, he assured us, respectful of the existing White House. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he declared with the confidence of a man who has never let facts interfere with his fantasies. “It’ll be near it but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
Of course he’s the biggest fan. Trump is always the biggest fan of whatever he happens to be talking about at that particular moment, unless he’s decided to be the biggest critic, in which case no one has ever been more disappointed, believe him, nobody.
Fast forward to October, and those reassuring words have about as much substance as a Trump University diploma. The East Wing isn’t merely being “modernized,” that weasel word the White House initially deployed to obscure the truth. It’s being obliterated. Bulldozers and excavators are tearing through walls that have stood since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, reducing to rubble a structure expanded by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. The facade is gone, windows dangle from twisted frames, and the entire wing — the traditional home of the First Lady’s office since Rosalynn Carter made it so in 1977 — will soon be nothing but a memory and a pile of debris.
But Trump, that maestro of manufactured reality, has perfected the art of the brazen pivot. When confronted with the rather obvious contradiction between his July promises and October’s demolition derby, he simply rewrote the script. “In order to do it properly we had to take down the existing structure,” he explained, as if this had been the plan all along, as if we’re all suffering from collective amnesia about what he said three months ago.
The “we determined” passive construction is vintage Trump — accountability disappears into a fog of unspecified experts and “tremendous” amounts of study. Who determined this? When? Why weren’t the American people, who own that building, informed that the scope had changed so dramatically? These are questions the Trump White House treats as irritating gnats to be swatted away with accusations of “fake news” and “manufactured outrage.”
Speaking of manufactured, let’s talk about the money. Trump’s ballroom began its life as a $200 million project. By September, he’d casually inflated it to $250 million. Now, in October, we’re at $300 million. That’s a 50 percent cost overrun before a single chandelier has been hung. It’s the kind of budgetary discipline that made Trump’s casinos such spectacular failures.
But don’t worry, Trump assures us, he’s paying for it himself. Well, himself and “some friends.” And YouTube. And Amazon. And Apple. And Google. And Meta. And Microsoft. And Lockheed Martin. And a parade of corporate supplicants who apparently can’t wait to have their names etched into the People’s House in exchange for multimillion-dollar donations that, conveniently, qualify for tax deductions through a nonprofit.
Nothing says “I’m personally funding this” quite like hitting up defense contractors and tech giants for cash. One can only imagine the sales pitch: “Listen, I’m building the most beautiful ballroom, the best ballroom, and I thought you might want to be a part of history. Also, isn’t it funny how many government contracts your company has? Just saying.”
The ethical stench is overpowering, but Trump has long operated in an atmosphere so thick with conflicts of interest that one more hardly registers. YouTube’s parent company Alphabet is kicking in $22 million as part of a legal settlement — essentially paying Trump to make a lawsuit go away, with the money conveniently redirected to his vanity ballroom project. It’s the kind of circular self-dealing that would make a carnival barker blush.
And what are these generous patriots buying with their patriotism? According to sources who’ve seen the pitch documents, donors might get their names literally carved into the White House forever. The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House — yes, that’s what they’re calling it — could become a donor wall of corporate logos and billionaire surnames. Nothing captures the spirit of American democracy quite like having Lockheed Martin’s name chiseled into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, those party poopers who care about silly things like architectural integrity and historical significance, have begged the administration to pause and actually go through, you know, the legally required review process. They note, with what one imagines is barely concealed horror, that the 90,000-square-foot addition will “overwhelm the White House itself,” which is a mere 55,000 square feet.
But why would Trump care about proportion, balance, or classical design principles? The man who thinks more gold makes everything better, who believes bigger is always superior, who measures success in square footage and television ratings, isn’t about to let some architectural historians lecture him about restraint. He’s building a ballroom that’s larger than the White House, damn it, because that’s what you do when you’re Donald Trump. You don’t complement; you dominate.
Of course, Trump has appointed one of his own aides, Will Scharf, to head the very commission that’s supposed to approve this monstrosity. Scharf has helpfully discovered that the commission only has jurisdiction over “vertical build,” not demolition. How convenient. It’s rather like appointing the fox to head the henhouse oversight committee and being shocked when the fox decides the henhouse doesn’t really need oversight after all.
So the demolition proceeds without approval, without proper public review, without any meaningful oversight. Trump even described the sound of construction as “music to my ears,” adding, with that telling Freudian honesty, “When I hear that sound it reminds me of money.” Not history. Not service. Not the weight of democratic tradition. Money.
The historical amnesia required to defend this project is staggering. Yes, presidents have renovated the White House. But those renovations went through public processes, involved consultation with preservation experts, and were guided by something beyond one man’s desire to out-bling his own golf resort. Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing to create more office space while preserving the residence. Truman undertook a massive structural renovation because the building was literally collapsing. They didn’t demolish historic wings to build bigger party spaces.
And let’s be clear about what’s being demolished. The East Wing isn’t just any addition. It’s where first ladies have worked and made history, where women’s visibility in the White House has been centered, where Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and others shaped their roles and advanced causes that mattered to millions of Americans. That history is being jackhammered into dust so Trump can have a bigger room to host the autocrats and oligarchs he so admires.
Hillary Clinton, who once worked in that East Wing, put it succinctly: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” But Trump has never understood the difference between ownership and stewardship. To him, everything is about possession, about stamping his brand on it, about making it bigger and gaudier and more “Trump.”
The renderings of the planned ballroom look exactly like what you’d expect: Mar-a-Lago North. All gilt and glass and ostentatious chandeliers, bulletproof windows glinting in the sun, a glass bridge connecting this temple of excess to the actual White House like some grotesque architectural tumor. It’s the aesthetic of a man who thinks the Louis XIV look is understated, who believes that if some gold is good, drowning in gold is better.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, playing her assigned role as Trump’s truth-mangler-in-chief, has dismissed all criticism as “manufactured outrage” from “unhinged leftists.” Because wanting the White House to remain architecturally coherent and historically intact is clearly unhinged. Because thinking that major demolitions of national landmarks should go through proper review processes is obviously leftist lunacy. The gaslighting is so thick you could build a ballroom out of it.
Trump keeps insisting that presidents have wanted this ballroom for 150 years. Really? Which presidents? Where’s the evidence? It’s another Trump special: making up history to justify present excess. Presidents have wanted better office space, better security, better preservation of the existing structure. But a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that dwarfs the White House itself? That’s not a presidential dream. That’s a Trump fever dream.
The timeline of his deceptions is almost admirably brazen. July: “It won’t interfere.” October: “We had to take down the existing structure.” September: “$250 million.” October: “$300 million.” The goalposts don’t just move; they’re loaded onto trucks and driven to another state entirely.
Meanwhile, the government has shut down, federal workers are going without paychecks, and Trump is hosting donor dinners in the East Room while the sound of demolition echoes from the other side of the building. “That’s music to my ears,” he said, sighing with satisfaction. Of course it is. While Americans worry about making rent, Trump is worried about whether his new ballroom will be big enough to accommodate 999 people instead of a paltry 650.
The whole sordid affair is Trump distilled to his essence: the lying, the grifting, the vandalism of institutions he’s supposed to be protecting, the shameless self-dealing, the aesthetic assault on good taste, the bulldozing of norms and rules and history itself. He’s turning the White House into a Trump property, complete with corporate sponsorships and his name on the door.
And when it’s done, when the gilded monstrosity is complete and Trump is hosting tyrants and tycoons in his oversized playroom, he’ll stand there admiring his handiwork, seeing only his own reflection in the gold-plated surfaces. He’ll never see what was lost — the history, the dignity, the restraint that once characterized the People’s House.
Because Donald Trump has never understood that some things aren’t meant to be bigger, gaudier, more “Trump.” Some things are meant to be preserved, protected, treated with respect and humility. But humility has never been Trump’s strong suit. Neither has honesty, integrity, or giving a damn about anything beyond his own glorification.
So the demolition continues. The East Wing falls. The costs balloon. The donors line up with their checkbooks and their expectations of influence. And Trump, that builder of monuments to himself, adds another grotesque jewel to his crown: a ballroom fit for a king in a house that was never meant for royalty.
For some reason I feel like he crossed a line America might not go of. Watching him blather on and on about what he is doing and how this is not going to cost Americans antyhing - I felt something.
It felt like his undoing.
