Democrats may not be happy about President Donald Trump’s controversial renovations at the White House, but they do see a political opportunity in the GOP’s effusive defense of them.
As images of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing blanket news coverage, GOP lawmakers are standing by the president, justifying his choice to start a private and pricey remodeling of the East Wing during a government shutdown.
“I think it’s awesome,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said of the reportedly unauthorized construction. “The president has an unbelievable eye for detail and construction. Obviously, he’s great at it, and he’s making the White House into, I think, what the people around the world’s expectations are.”
“I personally don’t have a problem with it,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said. “I’ve walked through the east part of the White House before. You just kind of walk through it. I know there’s some offices there.”
“It’s not like it’s sacrosanct,” he said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., presented the renovation as a statement of work ethic.
“President Trump’s made it clear, even during a government shutdown, he’s gonna keep working,” Scalise said, touting the fact that private money is funding the project.
When MSNBC pointed out to Scalise that the public doesn’t really know who’s paying for the renovation, Scalise seemed to answer a different question.
“We all know that the White House has been renovated multiple times,” Scalise said. “And these renovations are gonna benefit every future president and the American people.”
But Democrats are casting the president’s decision to bulldoze part of the White House — in the middle of a shutdown, no less — as a prime example of Trump being out of touch.
Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said the demolition was “symbolic” of the Trump administration overall.
“He’s trying to tear down the rule of law, trying to tear down our democratic institutions, he’s trying to tear down the hopes and dreams of so many,” Padilla said. “He’s tearing down the economy, and now he’s tearing down the East Wing of the White House.”
Democratic leaders were also quick to capitalize on the optics.
“Donald Trump is telling the American people: No Medicaid for you, ballroom for me,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday. As Schumer made his speech on the Senate floor, he stood beside a poster of the East Wing being demolished.
“Trump is not focused on fixing health care, but rather on vanity projects, like this one, that don’t do anything to benefit the American people. They only benefit Trump and his ego,” Schumer said.
House Majority PAC communications director CJ Warnke told MSNBC that Democrats plan to use the East Wing controversy as “just another example of Donald Trump and Republicans being typical politicians who broke their promise to lower costs.”
“They should be focused on ending their shutdown and making health care more affordable for families — not spending hundreds of millions of dollars destroying history and building a ballroom,” Warnke said. “This is a political liability for the GOP.”
Democrats are poised to make affordability a central tenet of their message heading into the 2026 midterms. Whether Trump’s White House remodel still resonates with voters next year remains to be seen. But a YouGov poll released Wednesday showed that 53% of Americans strongly or somewhat disapprove of the East Wing demolition.
“They’re not even pretending to care about your health costs going up,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., posted online, over a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt bragging about the president’s focus on his new ballroom.
Of course, at least one Republican on Capitol Hill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, acknowledged Thursday that the optics of the renovations — during a government shutdown, while Americans relying upon Obamacare are suddenly facing health care premiums that could more than double next year — are “bad.”
“They’re seeing the headlines that say SNAP benefits — food benefits for lower-income people — may not be available next week,” Murkowski said of voters. “Federal funding for nursing moms, WIC benefits, may not be available after the first of November. And then you have a White House where they’re expanding a massive ballroom.”
“There’s a conflict in just the reality that people are seeing,” Murkowski continued, in comments she made to Semafor and NBC News on Thursday. “They’re seeing the impact of a government shutdown on them and their families that is personal and with potential for really harmful impacts. And then they see Washington: Business as usual. We’re voting on judges and the East Wing of the White House is being taken down for a massive ballroom.”
Part of the controversy is over the seemingly sudden decision to demolish the entire East Wing, after the White House said in July that the construction “won’t interfere with the current building.” The effort, Trump said, would “be near it but not touching it.”
But this week that narrative completely changed, with the White House now acknowledging that all of the East Wing would be leveled.
Democrats on Capitol Hill quickly started asking questions, as Democratic appropriators laid out in a letter to Trump administration officials. Led by Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Democratic leaders on the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the White House’s spending asked when the plan to demolish the entire East Wing came together, what is being done to preserve historic artifacts in the building, whether the White House had gone through the legally required public review process, whether the construction plans had been reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, whether the White House sought bids from different construction companies and who contributed how much to the project.
The White House released a list of donors helping to finance the project this week, which includes Amazon, Alphabet, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir and T-Mobile, among others. But the full details about the private donations and the amounts of money contributed remain unclear.
The president has so far not disclosed how much he himself is contributing.
Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal, was also included on a list of top donors to the project.
All of the questions notwithstanding, Democrats seem to think the issue could be a political winner — if only because the images of Trump literally tearing down the White House are so evocative.
“My heart breaks, my stomach turns when I see the destruction of an iconic treasure,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “I just can’t believe that the wrecking ball is taken to this iconic structure that symbolizes America and our strength and culture, and all without approval of Congress or any other elected body or individual other than the president of the United States.”
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.