The East Wing of the White House was torn town completely this week, with crews finishing Donald Trump’s dirty work by Thursday afternoon. Satellite images on CNN (with a neat little slider so you can compare the before and after) show that the demolition also included the colonnade that formerly connected the East Wing to the main White House residence.
It’s no big deal, we’re being assured by the Usual Suspects, including Trump himself, because after all, the structure isn’t really all that historic. And it’ll be replaced by a beautiful ugly 90,000-square-foot ballroom that’s bigger than the main White House, which everyone has been demanding for over 150 years. It used to be for the “last hundred years,” but like the number of wars Trump ended and the cost of the ballroom itself, the number keeps increasing. Just this week the alleged price tag jumped first from $200 million to $250 million, then to $300 million, and by Thursday afternoon Trump was assuring reporters that donors had given $350 million, and that he himself had personally kicked in “millions of dollars,” no you can’t see any receipts.
Yesterday, the White House released what it said was a list of donors who’ll be funding the new ballroom (and maybe the demolition of the East Wing, but who wants to have their name associated with that?). The list didn’t specify any dollar amounts, because it’s none of your business. The donors include Altria Group (the cancer people formerly known as Philip Morris), Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Comcast, Palantir Technologies, and a whole bunch more. You’d have a hard time completely boycotting them if you wanted to remain online.
Trumpworld talking points have repeatedly claimed, as White House Lying Secretary Karoline Leavitt did Thursday, that “It’s not going to cost taxpayers a dime,” and if you believe that you’re probably still chuckling over how smart it was of Trump to make Mexico pay for the border wall, and you also believe he paid for both his campaigns himself, because he’s a rich genius businessman.
The administration weaponized the dubious claim that the monstrous new ballroom will be “free,” claiming that justifies skipping even a pretense of formal review by the bodies that normally address changes to the White House. As we noted previously, Trump appointed his own yes-guys to the National Capitol Planning Commission, whose chair robotically said the commission had no authority to stop the demolition of the East Wing, or presumably any other historic building including the Residence and the Oval Office. Not that Trump would ever consider such a thing. But he can if he wants to, OK?
As more and more Americans have reacted angrily to the demolition, the rightwing lie-o-sphere has also ramped up its claims that Trump isn’t doing anything unprecedented at all by ripping down an entire wing of the White House on his own say-so. Leavitt praised the wisdom of the destruction yesterday, carefully avoiding saying it was necessary to burn the East Wing in order to save it, but using similar doublespeak.
“The plans changed, and the president heard counsel from the architects and the construction companies who said that in order for this East Wing to be modern and beautiful for many, many years to come, for it to be a truly strong and stable structure, this Phase 1 that we’re now in was necessary. The president wants to do right by the People’s House,” the lying liar lied.
The East Wing hasn’t been “torn down,” it’s merely being made strong and stable for decades to come! You know, by tearing it to the ground and replacing every atom with some cheaper, tackier atoms. Despite Leavitt’s suggestion that the building needed work to remain standing, no, unlike the White House itself before Harry S Truman’s full-building renovation starting in 1949 — approved by Congress — the East Wing wasn’t in any danger of falling down, either.
Even before the full extent of the demolition was clear, a YouGov snap poll taken Tuesday (archive link) found that only a third of Americans were in favor of Trump’s plans for a new ballroom and the already-completed paving of the Rose Garden, while only a quarter (almost entirely Republicans) approved of the “decision to demolish part of the East Wing of the White House as part of the renovations.” That’s probably the nicest way to have framed the question with any accuracy.
Even this top-line breakdown of the results, showing only that 45 percent of Republicans approve of the demolition (and 77 percent of Dems disapprove), misses some nuances; when you look at the degree to which respondents approve or disapprove of the demolition, the contrasts are even more stark: Republicans are evenly split between “strongly approve” and “somewhat approve” at 22 percent each, while Democrats and Independents are damn sure they disapprove, with 67 percent of Dems and 42 percent of independents strongly against, with just 10 percent and 13 percent somewhat against it, respectively.
Also, remember that when the poll was taken Tuesday, media reports still said only “part” of the East Wing had been torn down. The polling now that it’s a fait accompli seems almost certain to be even more negative.
That explains why the administration has shifted into Full Gaslighting Mode, not necessarily to convince the public as a whole that we don’t really care about the demolition of the East Wing, but to shore up support among Trumpers. The rest of us don’t matter.
To that end, the lie factories have been running full tilt to insist that tearing down an entire wing of the White House is no biggie, because previous presidents have made modifications to the executive mansion. Also, the narrative goes, nobody really gives a shit about the East Wing anyway and only crazy leftists are making any noise about it because they hate Trump and America.
Leavitt has done her best to push the narrative that other presidents regularly remade the White House, insisting at yesterday’s press briefing that duh, Presidents have always been able to tear down anything they want, and look, they did!
She waved around a photo of the demolition of the White House interior during the Truman administration and triumphantly snotted, “How do you think that rubble got there? Demolition!” Did she mention the teensy detail that Truman didn’t just call up a contractor and tell them to go to town, but instead sought approval from Congress, with the actual year-long process being supervised by a joint congressional commission instead of just Truman? Nahh, boring details. Besides, it’s FREE!
The official White House website was also turned to the propaganda mission with a brand new page explaining that we have always been at war with EastWingia, and that it’s completely routine to demolish it. In addition to a lot of crap about how a new ballroom is absolutely necessary, the page includes a hilariously ham-handed timeline of “major events” that starts out OK (rebuilding the White House after it was burned in the War of 1812, and the 1902 addition of the West Wing and the “East Terrace,” which FDR expanded into its pre-Monday East Wing configuration in 1942. Here’s that 1902 East Terrace:
But to downplay the destruction, Trump’s WH timeline starts lying. The entry for 1902 acknowledges that the “East Terrace” became part of the East Wing. But for lazy readers, the timeline for 1942 offers a misleading heading — “Addition of the East Wing” — and text saying that FDR “constructed the East Wing for additional staff and wartime security, including a bomb shelter.” Guys, there was a building there already!
The timeline after the 1973 construction of the Briefing Room over what had been a swimming pool appears to have been slapped together by the same crew of glue-sniffing llamas who finished the opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with a sudden recitation of evil Democratic crimes that have absolutely nothing to do with the physical structure of the White House. (For space, this edited screenshot snips out the 2020 addition of an elegant tennis pavilion by the gracious and classy Melania Trump.)
Wingnut media has been very busy insisting that Other Presidents Did It Too, pointing out that Barack Obama converted an outdoor tennis court into a Black-People Basketball Court for Black People by putting up glass backboards and repainting lines on the concrete, so that was exactly like tearing down an entire wing of the White House. To underline the horrors, more than one troll on Twitter added historic photos of the partial demolition of the East Terrace while FDR built the full East Wing, because look! Rubble! Obama did it with his time machine!
Somewhat more sophisticated liars, including Ted Cruz (of course!), seized on CNN video about a four-year White House renovation project to upgrade heating, cooling, electrical, and fire-alarm infrastructure that was recommended by the George W. Bush administration and approved by Congress in 2008.
Ah, but it actually got underway during Obama’s first year in office, so in the Twitter retelling, Obama actually spent more taxpayer funds on his Black People Basketball Court for Black People than Trump’s vanity project will cost using private money!!!! And where was the “Democratic outrage,” then??? Wow what hypocrites!!!!
Another prong of the propaganda effort — after architecture experts on Twitter mostly stopped trying to pretend that only the “façade” of the East Wing was being removed — has been downplaying the significance of the building itself. Trump claimed the East Wing “was never thought of as being much. It was a very small building,” and yesterday, Leavitt enthusiastically explained on Twitter (archive link) that you literally have to be crazy to care that the entire East Wing is gone, proclaiming,
“White House ballroom construction derangement syndrome is real and is currently dominating the rhetoric of the nation’s political Left. Their sole purpose in life appears to be just to be angry over anything and everything President Donald Trump does, even when the accusations are a complete detachment from reality. Like nearly everything these people say anymore, their antics are not grounded in reality and are completely unhinged.”
You see? The only people who think this is bad are deranged Leftists, who hate Trump and are detached from reality. Normal people think the Ballroom is the best, and don’t care about some old building that wasn’t significant to begin with.
The Smartest Man on Fox, Jesse Watters, explained that only crazy people are pretending to care about the demolition of the East Wing, because Democrats are all monsters but also losers who can’t accomplish anything, which is why Trump is winning by tearing it all down and then spraying POOP ON THEM.
See? That’s how a sane, reasonable person discusses the big picture in the Age of Trump. Shut up.
Sure, Trump Tearing Down White House, But At Least Is Not Black Man With Feet On Resolute Desk
Trump To Build Yugest, Tackiest Ballroom At White House Like You Wouldn’t Believe
Christian Fascist Lunatics Will Never Stop Saying Biden Literally Canceled Easter To Appease Big Trans
[WaPo (gift link) / CNN / The Hill / NPR / White House / Snopes]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to help keep Wonkette going with a one-time donation, here is the button for that!
www.wonkette.com (Article Sourced Website)
#East #Wing #White #House #Completely #Obliterated #Thinking #Matters