On the menu today: You know that a whole bunch of mainstream media institutions were just itching to offer some version of . . .
Page A1: Donald Trump Destroys White House (Continued on page A6)
Page A6: Wall as Part of Ballroom Construction Project
The demolition to prepare for the new ballroom facility on the White House grounds is underway, and a lot of people in Washington aren’t happy about it, and contend President Trump has rushed through the usual review and approval process in order to bring a little of that Mar-a-Lago style to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Read on.
Trump’s Ballroom Dreams
Back in July, President Trump announced plans to build the White House State Ballroom, which the official announcement described as “a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people — a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House.” The announcement added, “the site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942.”
Some people will not like the jarring images of construction equipment demolishing part of an outside wall of the East Wing. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department “instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.”
Whether or not Treasury Department employees share pictures, it’s not like a major construction project on the White House grounds can be easily hidden. Trump himself discussed the project yesterday hosting the Louisiana State University baseball team.
“You know, we’re building right behind us, we’re building a ballroom. They’ve wanted a ballroom for 150 years, and I’m giving that honor to this wonderful place,” Trump said. “This was the ballroom, and this room holds 88 people. And the — and the new one will hold 999 people, which is a difference. I say 999 because I didn’t want to crack a thousand. I didn’t want people to get concerned, because that’s getting big. But we’re going to have — we’ll have the most beautiful ballroom in the country.”
Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith lamented on X, “Seeing the White House torn apart is really emblematic of the times we’re in.” Maria Shriver posted a picture and lamented, “This breaks my heart and it infuriates me. Hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new ballroom.”
First, those “hundreds of millions of dollars” — $250 million — are privately donated; no taxpayer dollars will be used for the construction of the new ballroom. Earlier this month, Trump hosted a dinner in the East Room of the White House to thank the donors:
More than three dozen corporate executives and wealthy businesspeople attended the dinner, where Mr. Trump expressed gratitude for their opening their checkbooks for his long-desired state ballroom. Representatives from companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin were in attendance.
So were wealthy supporters of Mr. Trump, like Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire oil and gas executive who bankrolled Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign and stands to benefit from his energy policies. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who run the crypto exchange Gemini and have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc., were also there.
Second, the fact that the project is privately funded also explains why the White House demolition and construction are continuing during the government shutdown.
Presidents have broad latitude for making changes to the White House grounds. Theodore Roosevelt added a tennis court, George H. W. Bush had a half-court basketball court built on the White House grounds in 1991, and Obama had the half-court adapted to a full-size court.
Unsurprisingly, there are those who contend the new ballroom is unnecessary and represents the destruction of historic parts of the White House complex. In late August, People magazine quoted unnamed sources saying, “The Trumps’ recent revisions to the White House have been implemented to more closely mirror the vibe of the first family’s Florida beach club” Mar-a-Lago:
One social source in Florida tells PEOPLE that both Donald and Melania “would prefer to be in Palm Beach,” so instead they’re “bringing Mar-a-Lago to Washington.”
“Their plans for the White House are being implemented to remind them of Mar-a-Lago,” the source says. “That way, when they aren’t in Palm Beach they are there in the mind.”
Certain former White House staffers appealed to the National Capital Planning Commission to “to do whatever they could in protest to ‘this horrible project’ to no avail.”
The National Capital Planning Commission is a federal agency that has broad regulatory power over construction projects in the District of Columbia. In August, the Washington Post reported that the past, “A security fence and a tennis pavilion — neither of which involved the White House itself — each took more than a year to move through the National Capital Planning Commission, which vets construction of and renovation to the region’s federal buildings.” That Post article noted that the White House had, as of mid-August, not submitted plans for the ballroom to be reviewed by the NCPC.
In July, Trump appointed three new members to the NCPC, in keeping with the law: “Trump named William Scharf, White House staff secretary who served as the president’s personal attorney, the commission’s new chairman. Michael Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff who also served as political director of Trump’s 2024 campaign, and Stuart Levenbach, an official in the Office of Management and Budget, were also named to the commission.”
Scharf said of the ballroom project during a September 4 meeting, “This commission does not have jurisdiction. It has long denied that it has jurisdiction over demolition and site preparation work for federal buildings on federal property. . . . Any assertion that this commission should have been consulted earlier than it has been, or than it will be, is simply false and represents a misunderstanding of this commission’s role in that project.”
The NCPC is closed because of the federal government shutdown.
On August 5, the American Institute of Architects contended that the Trump administration was rushing through the approval process:
Although the ballroom project may have secured private funding, the White House is not a private building. The historic edifice at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the People’s House, a national treasure and an enduring symbol of our democracy. Any modifications to it — especially modifications of this magnitude — should reflect the importance, scale, and symbolic weight of the White House itself. So, too, must the process rise to the significance of the building and the extent of the proposed alterations.
On October 16, the Society of Architectural Historians issued a statement expressing “great concern over the proposed ballroom addition to the White House,” adding “such a significant change to a historic building of this import should follow a rigorous and deliberate design and review process”:
The advisory bodies that exist to better guide preservation of the White House, namely The Committee for the Preservation of the White House, The White House Historical Association and the National Capital Planning Commission, should be consulted and offer their unbiased, thorough and objective assessment and oversight. Moreover, these reviews should be carried out at a pace that allows in-depth deliberations and should not be rushed to meet an aggressive timeline.
While the exterior of the White House looks largely unchanged from the first photograph taken of it in 1846, the interior has been completely gutted and rebuilt. I wonder how many Americans are even aware of the large-scale renovations conducted during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Historian Michael Beschloss wrote:
Except for the four exterior walls, today’s presidential residence is almost entirely a 1952 imitation of the original.
In 1947, the White House was in danger of internal physical collapse. One day, while President Harry S. Truman took a bath upstairs, a great Blue Room chandelier threatened to crash down on his wife, Bess, and her guests from the Daughters of the American Revolution. The president later joked that he might have unexpectedly dropped through the ceiling naked on the ladies below, and he confessed that the incident made him nervous.
The upstairs floor, he noted, “sagged and moved like a ship at sea.”
Upon investigating the situation, Truman was told that hasty renovations, demanded by various impatient presidents in the past, had led to the weakening or removal of load-bearing walls and other supporting structures. Beams were “staying up from force of habit only,” he was informed, and the mansion had become a firetrap. Truman later wrote that with so many thousands of visitors and presidential guests, “My heart trembles when I think of the disasters we might have had.”
The following year, his daughter Margaret’s piano broke through the floor of the family quarters. In August, Truman recorded in his diary that with his wife away, he had been “moved into the Lincoln Room — for safety — imagine that!” He wrote to his sister that the White House was “about to fall in.” That November, after the president won a full term over Thomas E. Dewey, the first family was whisked across Pennsylvania Avenue to reside in the presidential guest quarters called Blair House.
When I read about pianos crashing through the floor of the White House, I wonder how any teacher can make history sound boring.
ADDENDA: In case you missed it yesterday, former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre writes in her new autobiography that she left the Democratic Party because of their cruel decision to pry the 2024 presidential nomination from Joe Biden’s fingers and hand it to Kamala Harris.
Elsewhere, Jean-Pierre argued to The Bulwark’s Tim Miller that Joe Biden spoke to the press more often that Donald Trump does:
Miller: He talked way less to the press than Donald Trump does. Way less. And he wasn’t out there at all. He wasn’t good off the cuff. He wasn’t doing press conferences. Let’s just be real. Like, he didn’t do events.
Jean-Pierre: But Tim, that’s not true. Tim, you’re conflating all of it. That That’s what you’re, no, you’re first you’re telling me he didn’t talk well about it. Then you’re telling me he didn’t talk at all.
Miller: He didn’t do either. He didn’t talk very often and when he did it wasn’t very good. He sounded very old.
Jean-Pierre: You weren’t paying attention to what we were doing at the White House. . . . The president . . . spoke to the American people a couple times a week. He traveled and did domestic travel and talked directly to the American people.
“A couple times a week”!
Finally, over in that other Washington publication I write for, a look at our policy of blowing up allegedly drug-running boats off the coast of Venezuela and wondering how that gets us to a freer, better future for the beleaguered people of that country.