When You're a Star, They Let You Do It

Tearing down the East Wing. Defecating on America. The metaphors are getting way too literal.

Donald Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House to make way for a gigantic gilded ballroom. He initially promised that there would only be small changes to the building, and nothing would be destroyed. Now, it’s being entirely demolished.

According to the president, he met with “two geniuses” — men he didn’t name — who told him he didn’t need permits or permission to make whatever changes he liked to the White House. “I said, ‘how long would it take? They said, ‘Sir, you can start tonight. You have zero zoning conditions. You have no approvals.’‘” Trump said. “I said, ‘you gotta be kidding.’ He said, ‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.’”

There is actually a body charged with overseeing changes to the nation’s capital city and preserving its history; Trump has ignored them. The ballroom he’s building is massive, and historic preservationists warm it will overwhelm the primary building and compromise the aesthetic of the White House grounds. It’s not exactly a shock that the man who owns Mar-a-Lago and whose favored aesthetic is “throw more gold on it” is not overseeing the classiest renovation. But this really does look like it’s going to be a monstrosity. Here’s a mockup — you can see the ballroom on the right, over the former East Wing, which used to be roughly the same size as the West Wing:

The ballroom dwarfs the primary White House residence. It feels quite visually unbalanced. It’s ugly. It’s tacky. It’s also reportedly going to be connected to the primary White House building by a glass bridge (ugh); it’s hard to imagine how one builds a glass bridge into the White House without making some significant changes to that structure, too. And it’s all about being built because an egomaniacal president wants to leave a huge mark that is all about him — even if the mark is a giant eyesore.

Adding a larger ballroom to the White House isn’t itself a bad idea, and it seems like the space really is needed. But it’s a question of process (and, to be honest, taste). The White House isn’t Trump’s personal abode; it’s a place he’s living for four years, that he is a custodian of. Changes to it should never be made unilaterally, and should have the input of people who understand and respect the building’s history and integrity. Past presidents have renovated where needed, and they generally didn’t face much in the way of backlash, because at least in the modern era the renovations have been modest, necessary, and completed after undergoing a thorough approvals process. They didn’t just jam through what they wanted.

I was struck by Trump’s comment that he was told, “‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.’” It harkens back to another famous Trump observation: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

This kind of entitlement is what has characterized Trump’s entire adult life. It’s what is characterizing his presidency.

It should also not be lost on us that Donald Trump is demolishing the East Wing, where First Ladies and their staffs worked. This is an administration characterized by virulent misogyny, and a president elected on the by white-hot male resentment. This is a presidency of the manosphere. Of course they’re destroying the area of the White House grounds largely associated with women.

Last week, Trump also posted an AI video of himself dropping excrement on American cities. The point was to mock the No Kings protesters who took to the streets. The visual, though, was him literally dropping shit on America. This presidency is shocking in a million ways, but this video really was a new low: The juvenile humor of it, the very fact of an American president declaring that millions of his fellow citizens deserved to be shat on because they disagree with him. Past presidents have almost to a one understood themselves to be president for all Americans. Not Trump. In his view, only Americans who are loyal to him are truly American at all.

Most American presidents, even ones I think were terrible, understood themselves as custodians — of a historic home, sure, but more importantly of an office, a people, a national creed, and a founding document that set out bold and crucial principles that would become a model of freedom and democratic rule. America is not perfect, but part of what has made America admirable is that our citizens and leaders alike have been committed to a set of ideals. We haven’t always lived up to those ideals — far from it — but the best parts of our history have been the times in which groups excluded from America’s promise demanded the country honor its commitments.

What we’re seeing now is a man who does not believe himself beholden to anything — not tradition, not morality, not the rule of law, not the US Constitution. And what is to me even scarier is that a significant minority of the nation lines up behind him, and also apparently has no fealty at all to America as a place and an idea and a collective that is ours only temporarily, that we have a collective obligation to preserve, improve, and pass on. This same group has deemed half the nation not really American by virtue of our liberal or even moderate politics, and they cheer the president on when he says that their fellow citizens are enemies. They claim removing confederate statues that are only a few decades old is an unacceptable erasure of history, but shrug as the president bulldozes part of the White House. It’s not about principles. It’s about dominance. These are not people who love American democracy and our history. They are people who simply want their guy in charge, so that he might humiliate, denigrate, and destroy the Americans they collectively dislike.

It is not normal to applaud a president for saying he shits on America. It’s not normal to allow private donors to funnel money to a presidential vanity project that involves destroying a large part of the single most iconic symbol of the United States.

“You can do anything you want.” “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” Trump is the most un-American president in modern American history. He’s destroying not just a physical manifestation of that history, but the social glue that has held this enormous, diverse, complicated country together. He’s not just taking a bulldozer to the East Wing; he’s taking it to all of us.

xx Jill