Wannabe King Trump Destroys the East Wing
Families are choosing between medicine and meals — and Trump’s out here building Versailles with your democracy. 💀💰
It was never enough for Donald Trump to defile decency, throttle the Constitution, and drag the presidency through every trough of vulgarity known to humanity. Now Trump is completing the desecration by turning the White House—the People’s House—into a gaudy Versailles knock-off, built not for governance, but for garish galas, self-worship, and pay-for-play corruption on steroids.
By now, you have probably heard about Trump’s latest White House obscenity – bulldozing the entire historic East Wing to start construction on a ballroom annex.
Lost in the disturbing images, the fine print details get even worse. Most architects and designers hate the Trump ballroom blueprints and plans, never mind that the process Trump has pursued is against the law.
Start with the architects. They call the Trump ballroom plan “tacky and horrifying.” And that’s putting it gently.
The 90,000 square foot structure will dwarf the existing 50,000 square foot White House, rupturing the symmetry and solemnity with a giant slab of neoclassical fakery.
The garish and ostentatious Trump ballroom will be the spiritual sibling of a Las Vegas hotel lobby (if Vegas had a dictator wing).
The architect responsible for the controversial ballroom design and overseeing the destruction/construction is a Trump friend – James McCrery.
McCrery specializes in religious architecture, with a portfolio that includes cathedrals in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas. Whatever. The American Institute of Architects recently sent a letter to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, politely urging “adjustments that would align the proposed additions with the White House’s historic character. “
McCrery’s former mentor, famed architect Peter Eisenman, was less diplomatic. Eisenman called the McCrery design “bonkers” and said, “putting a portico at the end of a long façade and not in the center is what one might say is untutored.”
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Design critic Christopher Hawthorne was even more blunt. He said, “the ballroom design, a big-footed architectural presence stomping toward the southern edge of the White House grounds, violates the very standards of beauty and proportion that McCrery loves to rhapsodize about in interviews, to say nothing of the protocols long in place to guide changes to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Those protocols are also the law. And under the law, all changes or modifications to any federal government building, including the White House, must be reviewed and approved by the National Capital Planning Commission.
Trump began demolishing the East Wing before giving the NCPC any submission or even communication about his McCrery plans.
Once again, the law is something for Trump to mock, evade, or rewrite, depending on which marble pillar stands in the way of His Orange Excellency’s vision.
This isn’t renovation. It’s imperial cosplay.
And like countless imperialistic authoritarians before him, Old Man Orange keeps lying. A few months ago, Trump insisted that no part of the existing White House would be affected or touched by the ballroom project. Now, the entire east wing — built in 1902 and home to the First Lady’s office, protocol staff, and visitors center — is being flattened.
There has been no review, no oversight, and not a peep from Republicans in Congress.
Because God forbid a GOP lawmaker dares to speak the Truth about his Majesty. And the truth is that Trump has always treated public office like a failing casino — drain the coffers, plaster your name in gold, and leave the wreckage behind for someone else to clean up.
Now Trump seeks to embed that pathology in stone and steel, building a party palace on sacred civic ground as if the White House were Mar-a-Lago North. The cost? Reportedly, a quarter of a billion dollars, supposedly from private donors. Who are these donors, and what will they expect in return — aside from invitations to waltz under chandeliers in the shadow of constitutional collapse? Trump won’t say.
Don’t be distracted by the ornate gold and champagne flutes.
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This project is not about events or hospitality. It is about permanence. The ballroom is an architectural IOU to Trump’s own ego — a monument not to America, but to a man who has never loved anything but his own reflection.
The symbolism is no less nauseating. At a time when democracy teeters, when citizens scrape to make ends meet, Trump wishes to pour gold leaf over the ruins of our civic trust. He is Nero with a spray tan, fiddling with blueprints as Rome rots.
Trump, ever the confidence man, understands one thing with brutal clarity: if you act with enough brazenness (along with a Republican House/Senate and a Conservative majority Supreme Court), the rules will dissolve before you.
And so we must ask: Is there any line Trump cannot or will not cross? If the literal foundations of the White House are not safe from his gaudy ambitions, what is?
If George Washington weeps, he weeps not because a ballroom is being built, but because the presidency has been hijacked by a man who views governance as nothing more than a red carpet opportunity for self-promotion, self-dealing, and family enrichment.
Trump’s White House ballroom is not a national project. It is a desecration — a monument to delusion, designed by sycophants, enabled by silence, and built on the demolished bones of law and legacy.
Let history record that when the People’s House was defiled, most conservatives watched in silence as a clown king prepared to build his golden cage.
But there will be a reckoning. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh is urging Democratic Presidential candidates to run on tearing down Trump’s ballroom abomination. Hear hear.
Democrats should pledge to make it a public celebration. Invite all Americans to come to Washington, D.C., with sledgehammers and crowbars for a weekend after the 2029 inauguration.
(If we are lucky enough to have a free/fair election in 2028).
Cleansing our nation of Trumpism — emotionally, politically, culturally, and physically — will be long and arduous.
Now is the time, though — for our own sanity — to start making the plans.
The Trump ballroom, like so much else Trump is inflicting, must not be allowed to stand.
Disgusting - not only that this ballroom is being built but Congress appears to not be stopping it!
As you know, everything Trump touches turns to shit. Such an Ahole. Stay strong, support causes near & dear and thank Democratic AG's, judges who rely on truth, justice and democracy to fight the fight although they are getting burnt out just like healthcare professionals during the Covid outbreak because Trump refused, denied, lied & tried to act like nothing was happening. Stay strong and fight the fight, we will prevail ! Also, have a safe & happy weekend !!!