In recent years, President Donald Trump and his allies have taken a firm stand in support of Confederate monuments. Sure, they’ve said, these statues honor proponents of slavery who took up arms against their fellow Americans and tried to tear the United States apart, but to move or alter these monuments in any way is to launch an attack on our collective history.
When it comes to destroying a third of the White House, however, the Republican president has embraced a very different perspective. NBC News reported:
The entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished ‘within days,’ according to two Trump administration officials. The demolition is a significant expansion of the ballroom construction project from what President Donald Trump said this summer.
This has turned into a political controversy with several moving parts, so let’s unpack the relevant details.
Moving the goalposts while moving the bulldozers: In July, the president assured the public that his ballroom project wouldn’t “interfere with” the current White House structure, adding, “It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.” Months later, he authorized the destruction of the East Wing facade, then most of the wing and then, as things currently stand, the entirety of the wing.
Rising costs: On Tuesday, Trump mocked former President Barack Obama over the budget for the Democrat’s presidential library, claiming that the former president made a mistake by prioritizing “women and DEI to build it.” (In context, the Republican’s reference to “DEI,” an acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” was apparently meant to mean “nonwhite people.”) One day later, Trump said the price tag for his ballroom had climbed to $300 million, up from his recent $250 million estimate, which was itself an upward revision from an original $200 million estimate.
Trump now claims the East Wing wasn’t that great after all: At an Oval Office event, the incumbent president said the White House’s East Wing, before he started destroying it, “was not much,” adding that it included elements that were “not particularly nice.” He concluded, “It was never thought of as being much.” Put another way, Trump boasted about his “love” for the original structure in July, only to change his mind soon after. (For the record, the East Wing, up until a few days ago, really was quite lovely.)
For that matter, given Trump’s obsession with adding gold finishes to just about everything in the Oval Office, he’s hardly the ideal arbiter for taste and style anyway.
Transparency: At the same Oval Office event, the Republican bragged about how “transparent” he’s been with the whole project. In reality, however, the White House has tried to limit officials from taking photographs of the destruction, and as The Washington Post reported, “The White House has released few details on the project’s funding — and has not sought permission from Congress.”
A growing body of critics: The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit agency created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, warned administration officials in a letter that the planned ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself.” The Society of Architectural Historians also isn’t pleased. Haunted by recent history: In June 2020, Trump posted a message to social media that read in part, “I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison.” Whether the president remembers this threat or not is unclear. A broken perspective: As journalist and historian Garrett Graff summarized, “If you step into the White House as president thinking it’s your own house — not the people’s house, not a national treasure you’re inheriting for four years, handed down across centuries and generations by the 44 men who have lived there before — it turns out that there’s not really anything that can stop you from tearing down the literal White House if you really want to. What’s stopped the previous 44 is that none of them would have ever dreamed of such a thing in the first place.” And that’s ultimately what makes this a national scandal. Trump is clearly driven by a core assumption, rooted in an authoritarian perspective, that he can destroy national treasures at his discretion — because he sees our treasures as his own.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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