Recommendations of the Editorial team
It’s so obvious that it’s becoming a cliché. A bulldozer making its way through the walls of the East Wing of the White House, crunching over splintered wood, tangled wires, reinforced concrete, drywall and plaster. If this scene had been shot in the writers’ room at Saturday Night Live, President Donald Trump himself would be driving the excavator.
After all, the demolition is the traumatic birth of his brainchild: a $250 million ballroom modeled on the one at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. A vast building of glass and columns that historians and architects warn is being built without regard to the historic character of the White House and outside legal boundaries. Welcome to Mar-a-Lago on the National Mall – Trump’s Versailles in Washington.
“Historically, major renovations to the White House were tightly scripted and bureaucratically monitored—never impulsive, never unilateral,” historian Alexis Coe tells Rolling Stone. “The demolition of the east wing and planned construction are being carried out with minimal transparency, without public design review and with uncertain financial oversight.”
Although demolition of the East Wing is already underway, the White House told Axios that it has not submitted its plans to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) — the agency that typically oversees federal buildings. It remains closed during the government shutdown, but Trump’s construction crews continue to work – at full speed.
Versailles in Washington: When power becomes decoration
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, Louis XIV poured millions of livres into expanding Versailles in order to retain the aristocracy. Trump seems to have the same impulse: control through grandeur.
He named his Mar-a-Lago property the “Southern White House” and spent a conspicuous amount of time there – surrounded by political courtiers. Now he’s bringing the same aesthetic and philosophy to Washington: a palace of vanity at the heart of democracy.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has begun literally remodeling the presidential residence in his own image. The Oval Office was decorated with gold trim and hardware store moldings reminiscent of a craft project. The West Colonnade received a “Presidential Walk of Fame” – with portraits of all presidents except Joseph Biden, whom Trump replaced with an autopen picture.
The rose garden was torn down and paved over to create a terrace copy of Mar-a-Lago – albeit without a pool and without the Florida sun. The rose bushes gave way to orange parasols under which the conservative elite dine.
But it is the demolition of the East Wing that makes Trump’s fantasy of power a visible reality. The bulldozer on the White House lawn is the symbol of his way of governing: laws, procedures, controls – all buried under rubble.