Choice quotes from Luke Broadwater's report on the razing of the east wing of the White House:
“'It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it,' he said in July. 'And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.'”
"But the two senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans, confirmed that the entire East Wing was being demolished."
"The president also said on Wednesday that the ballroom would cost $300 million, $100 million more than initially estimated."
"The scope of the demolition, and Mr. Trump’s repeated promises that the White House itself would not be affected by the work, were in many ways symbolic of how he has conducted his presidency. On a variety of issues, Mr. Trump has blown past norms and traditions, often moving so quickly that it can be too late for courts, Congress or the public to catch up."
"This is what happens when you decide that the thing that is most important is money and you empower a man who doesn’t understand anything else; who, indeed, equates money with self-worth."
~ Mary Trump
Glenn Kessler notes Trump's destruction of Bonwit Teller in NY and his bogus promise to preserve artistic features of that building:
"Trump knew that by the time the lawsuits wended their way through the courts, it would be too late to rebuild USAID, Voice of America and so many other agencies that he’s destroyed. They’ve been broken down into a million pieces, just like the Bonwit Teller sculptures."
#Trump #WhiteHouse #EastWing #ballroom
/5
https://glennkessler.substack.com/p/trumps-bonwit-tellerization-of-america
"The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that."
~ Philip Bump
Even if only intuitively, Donald Trump knows that the White House is a storehouse of power. He understands that, like the government itself, it is an institution that our impartial democratic system has spent two centuries nurturing and investing in. And this is why he wants it to be his,...
"You might think, well, the East Wing is not the West Wing, it’s not the Oval Office, it’s not the Executive Mansion itself. But the recklessness with which he pursued this suggests that all that history could be at risk. There’s no evidence that he did any documentation, any cataloging, any preservation efforts whatsoever."
~ Matt Ford
#Trump #WhiteHouse #EastWing #ballroom
/7
https://newrepublic.com/article/202154/trump-press-sec-flattery-goes-awry-ballroom-fiasco-worsens
"I think maybe the big story here as well is that the MAGA movement doesn’t have a conception of the public interest. It’s really just about Trump and MAGA and nothing else. Anything else that stands in the way of them is the enemy, even millions and millions of Americans."
~ Greg Sargent
"What, you ask, will that grand structure be called? Did you have to ask? According to the pledge agreement sent to donors, they’ll be contributing to the construction of 'The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.'"
~ William Kristol
Catherine Slessor casts a cold eye on the (cheap, faux, tawdry, tacky) bling that is the style par excellence of the man who now imagines he owns the people's house and can (as he has proven to us) do with it as he damned well pleases:
He has already turned the Oval Office into a wrestler’s changing room. Now the president is building a place so gilded Nero would feel at home. Why did he pick an architect whose speciality is Catholic churches?
"Renderings show a vast, glacially white aircraft hangar of a structure embellished with an ornate coffered ceiling, gilded Corinthian columns and drooping gold chandeliers. Nero, who conceived the original domus aurea, would feel right at home. ...
To him, buildings are simply extruded capital."
"He has an enduring fondness for Louis XIV bling, epitomised by his enrobing of a 1960s Manhattan skyscraper in golden bronze cladding to transform it into the gleamingly phallic Trump International Hotel and Tower. His more recent engoldening of the Oval Office, described by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt as a 'golden office for the golden age', has been unflatteringly compared to a professional wrestler’s dressing room."
"Modelled on the Parisian original and topped with a gilded, winged goddess of victory, the 'Arc de Trump' is intended to commemorate the US’s 250th anniversary next year. In launching this newest vanity project, Trump said: 'We love to fix up Washington.' Again, Nero would doubtless approve."
"For once, there is no obscuring the destruction required to build one of the Trump administration’s many new façades. Goodbye, East Wing; hello 999 capacity, $250 $300 million big empty room.
The metaphors write themselves, and they’re not even metaphors. Trump is destroying the White House, history, tradition, etc., to put up a new Mar-a-Lago and further enrich himself and his cronies."
~ Megan Houser
#Trump #WhiteHouse #EastWing #ballroom
/13
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-ballroom-and-the-bubbles
"But more than the gaudy McMansion-ing of it all, I’m fixated on the hollowness.
Everything about Trump is simulacrum, from his false-nostalgic sloganeering, to his AI propaganda, to his grand imperial warehouse-to-be. The exposed guts of the East Wing are what’s real. There’s a reason they didn’t want people taking pictures."
"Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about it today: Q - 'The president initially said that this project wouldn’t interfere with or touch the current structure. Leavitt: If you look at the renderings, it’s very clear the east wing was going to be modernized. Reporter: But modernizing and tearing down are two different things.'”
~ Ron Filipkowski
#Trump #WhiteHouse #EastWing #ballroom
/15
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/today-in-politics-bulletin-234-102325
"Donald Trump is apparently so proud of the ballroom he’s building at the White House that he doesn’t want anyone to see the construction in progress.
On Thursday, the Secret Service closed off access to the Ellipse park, where journalists were taking pictures and video of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Both CNN & Reuters photojournalists had to leave the area, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto."
~ Hafiz Rashid
#Trump #WhiteHouse #EastWing #ballroom
/16
https://newrepublic.com/post/202188/white-house-press-documenting-trump-renovation-ballroom
William Lindsey 
Doreen32128 ready to rumble!
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