Tearing down the House

Suddenly, preserving history is no longer important.

If nothing else, Donald Trump certainly possesses the capacity to surprise almost everyone. Even though I’ve never been a fan of Mr. Trump, I am continually surprised by the depths to which he can sink. That was the case on Wednesday of this week when I picked up my phone and saw that the president was demolishing the East Wing of the White House.

The East Wing was constructed in 1902 during the Administration of the other President Roosevelt as a one-story structure. A second level was added in 1942 under Harry Truman. It was this renovation that is being passed off online as President Obama’s installation of basketball courts, which were outside and did not involve wrecking the building. The East Wing was a separate building from the famous presidential mansion and contained rooms used for social functions, the First Lady’s offices, and the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker.

Aerial photo by Katie Harbath, posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter: https://x.com/katieharbath/status/1981410295789801719/photo/1

The demolition is intended to make way for Trump’s new White House ballroom, which also resulted in the destruction of the famous and historic Rose Garden, which dated back to the Kennedy Administration. The Trump Administration paved over the botanical landmark in July.

At the time, Trump promised, “It [the ballroom] won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it.”

As late as September 13, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed “nothing will be torn down” as part of the ballroom construction.

Sometime between July and October, plans changed. It’s hard to say exactly when because Trump has apparently not filed any paperwork about his construction plans. He says he doesn’t have to.

As Trump tells it, “I said, ‘How long would it take? They said: ‘Sir, you can start tonight. You have zero zoning conditions. You have no approvals,’ I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ He said: ‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.’”

There is a rule of thumb that one of Trump’s tells for lying is when he relates a story in which some unnamed person addresses him as “sir.” These stories are almost always dubious, and that’s the case here, because, as Republicans have helpfully pointed out, Trump is not a king and therefore cannot do anything he wants. (It would be nice if they would tell Trump that.)

The fact is that White House renovations are subject to laws and procedures. The occupant of the White House can’t just do whatever he wants with the building and grounds. This is logical because the First Family is a tenant, not a homeowner. The White House belongs to the people of the United States.

As The Hill describes, the White House is a national park and is administered by the National Park Service. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) is the governing body for construction and approvals involve a three-step process of approval of the basic concept, preliminary approval, and final approval.

A Trump Administration official argued that no permit was required for demolition, saying, “Construction plans have not yet been submitted to the NCPC, but they will be at the appropriate time.”

Yes, you read that right. The East Wing has been fully demolished, and the Trump Administration has not even started the approval process for new construction.

A former head of the NCPC disagrees with the Administration’s position. L. Preston Bryant said, “If there’s to be demolition, that’s part of the project. The demolition element is inherent in the overall project. Demo is not separated from construction. It’s part of it.”

In most cases, the National Historic Preservation Act must also be considered. The Hill notes, however, that the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court are exempted from the provisions of this law.

Conveniently for Trump, the newly appointed head of the NCPC, Will Scharf, agrees that “what we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build.” Scharf held forth in September that “demolition and site preparation work can certainly occur, but if you’re talking about actually building anything, then, yeah, it should go through our approval process,” reported the Associated Press.

If it sounds suspicious to you that a 100-plus-year-old historic public building can be destroyed on the whim of a president, you’re not alone. It sounds a lot like yet another case of Donald Trump appointing people who will tell him what he wants to hear.

The pictures of the demolition were visceral. When I saw them, I couldn’t believe that Trump would be so arrogant as to unilaterally destroy a large part of the White House complex. As a history buff and someone who loves America, it hurt to watch.

I can’t help but wonder if the destruction was meant to be a giant middle finger to a nation that had once again rejected Trump last weekend with massive No Kings rallies. Coincidence? Maybe not, since the ballroom project seems to have grown markedly in such a short time that there aren’t even any construction plans. I also have to wonder if the White House ever had any intention of submitting an approval request or if they just planned to build on the fly like squatters throwing up a shack on a vacant lot.

In any case, the destruction of the East Wing is a microcosm of Trump’s governance. He is destructive with no plans for replacing what is destroyed. He is dishonest about his intentions and changes policy on a whim. He is lawless and acts unilaterally and without authority. And his supporters, who railed against the removal of historic statues and the renovation of a private restaurant chain, uniformly did a quick about-face and are fine with it all.

To add insult to injury, the demolition occurred during the middle of a government shutdown in which federal employees are unpaid or being laid off, and many Americans can’t get important business done because government offices are closed. Yet the work on destroying the people’s White House continues because Trump claims it is financed with private funds, which raises a great many other questions about legality, quid pro quos, and access to the halls of government by favored billionaires. Aside from the fact that there ain’t any such thing as a free lunch, the whole ballroom-construction-during-a-government-shutdown scenario makes me think of Marie Antoinette and her ill-fated advice to “let them eat cake.”

Donald Trump’s abuses of power are many, but I wonder if this time he went too far. It’s easy not to be concerned about millions you don’t see dying in other countries because Trump and Musk cut off aid programs, people being killed at sea because the Administration has determined them to be “narcoterrorists,” or even people that we don’t know being snatched off the streets of American cities. It might be harder to ignore the shocking images of a gutted White House.

I’ve long thought that when Trump is gone, it will take decades to repair the damage that he and his MAGA cohorts have done to our Republic, as well as our place as the world’s leader for democracy, human rights, technology, and science and its largest economy. If Trump’s destructive cuts are ever restored, we will still have lost untold years of progress.

Some of the damage can never be undone. The lives lost and ruined by this Administration are more tragic than the demolition of a historic building, but the brazen and shameless assault on the White House is an appalling symbol of all that is wrong with the Trump Administration.

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