Donald Trump has made his mark on democracy. But his plan to extend the East Wing of the White House is a permanent altering of the people’s house and an extension of the Trump brand. A new ballroom might appear as another shrug-worthy flourish in a career filled with gilded lobbies and mirrored atriums, but the symbolism is harder to dismiss.
Mr. Trump is showing the world that his presidency is a royal court where a select few are invited to pledge their allegiance. This is not the first time he has made such a gesture. When he paved over the Rose Garden, he created a Beltway Mar-a-Lago he could overlook from the balconies of the White House. Mr. Trump is refashioning the presidential residence into a palace; our democracy is now a members-only club.
Mr. Trump has long treated architecture as a tool of identity. The Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was demolished in 1980 to make way for Trump Tower. Original limestone Art Deco reliefs, promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were destroyed in the process. Completed in 1984, Trump Tower was not merely a skyscraper but provided brand visibility in the form of a corporate logo constructed in dark reflective glass and brass.
Trump Tower marked a turning point in New York’s skyline; it was less a civic contribution and more a monument to the family name. The proposed White House ballroom follows this same trajectory, extending the journey from Fifth Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue.
While people might think brands have soul, they are — by intention and design — manufactured meaning. This meaning is communicated through symbols to differentiate one set of beliefs and experiences from another. Consensus around these beliefs creates intimate worlds like-minded people can inhabit, and feel as if they belong. The success or failure of any brand can be measured by the degree to which audiences are willing to accept these constructs as their own, and how deeply they pledge their loyalty and devotion.
Devotion has been the governing logic of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and what has been referred to as an allegiance to Mr. Trump’s brand. But it is no different from any other constructed trope; it is a manufactured persona curated through buildings, slogans and theatrics. Rather than working through only policy or institutional reform, Mr. Trump has relied on symbols and performances to conflate charisma with character and rancor with revelry.
“Make America Great Again” condensed a complicated political vision into a four-word slogan and a red baseball hat. The border wall became a logo in the landscape, more powerful as a symbol than as an unfinished structure. Rallies blur politics and entertainment. Social media posts serve as perpetual campaign material and announcements for followers to engage with. Governance, in practice, has been redefined as brand management. The effect is not incidental. Mr. Trump’s rule, like his architecture, is a spectacle designed for maximum recognition and impact.
For the last 200 years, the White House has been one of the strongest expressions of American democracy, a neoclassical reminder that the office of the presidency transcends any one person or party. The new ballroom, estimated at 90,000 square feet, will not be the first presidential intervention in the White House. Thomas Jefferson expanded the grounds with gardens that reflected Enlightenment ideals of reason and order. Franklin Roosevelt’s relocation of the Oval Office to the southeast corner of the West Wing brought light, dignity and accessibility to what was previously a dark, cramped space. Harry Truman oversaw the reconstruction of the White House interior, preserved and cataloged original woodwork, paneling and moldings, and saved the building from imminent collapse.
These improvements also further secured the White House against external threats. Jacqueline Kennedy’s restoration project in the 1960s emphasized historical continuity, treating the White House as a living museum of American history.
Each change deepened the building’s role as a national symbol while respecting its civic purpose. The symbol of democracy — that the very place belonged to the American people — remained intact.
Mr. Trump’s proposed ballroom, by contrast, suggests something else: The nation’s most enduring building will be reshaped in the image of Mr. Trump, one defined by over-the-top opulence, exaggerated scale and a preference for size over subtlety. Approximately 35,000 square feet larger than the entire executive residence, the new structure will challenge the integrity of the White House and convert the house of the people into a stage for personal aggrandizement.
The ballroom is, for the most part, not a practical addition but a metaphor for the Trump brand overtaking the institution. The absence of a grandiose entertaining room, for Mr. Trump, greatly limits the power of his presidency. While it is known that Mr. Trump loathes the big tents erected on the White House lawn to host state dinners, he also needs enough space for his role as impresario and ringmaster.
History offers precedents: Louis XIV’s vision for the design of Versailles transformed a royal residence into a stage on which his reign could be continuously performed. Its grandeur dazzled Europe, but its extravagance willfully separated a monarchy from its people, helping to seed the resentment that would later erupt in revolution. Benito Mussolini’s marble piazzas sought to tie fascism to Rome’s magnificence. Entire neighborhoods were demolished to create the vast boulevards of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, framing the Colosseum as a backdrop to his regime.
Fascist monuments throughout Italy borrowed heavily from imperial motifs, including arches, columns and triumphal forms, to suggest historical inevitability. In both Versailles and in fascist Rome, architecture was enlisted to extend the power of a leader by rewriting the meaning of a nation’s most visible symbols. And then we have the vast royal palaces and grounds in Saudi Arabia and the enormous tsarist spaces in St. Petersburg, Russia, like the Winter Palace, the Peterhof, Catherine Palace and Mikhailovsky Palace.
In each instance, sheer scale helped to visually impose unbreachable authority. And now Mr. Trump’s ballroom attempts to rescript the White House as an extension of the Trump brand, along with potential opportunities for like-minded corporations to donate funds in exchange for recognition of their own images.
The danger is that spectacle displaces substance. Mr. Trump’s ballroom appears to offer little beyond visibility itself. While a few rough sketches have been revealed, no architectural blueprints, floor plans or engineering drawings have been publicly released. In fact, this project’s central claim is this: Only a builder-president could deliver what “for 150 years” others could not.
This remains to be seen. What happens when the lights dim and the gilding fades is even harder to discern. A great brand can often be identified as much by its logo as by how it makes you feel; as a result, the ballroom’s strength will depend not on its intrinsic worth but on the willingness of others to believe what it signifies.
Mr. Trump’s legacy as a president could lie less in policy than in the cultural logic he is advancing: the transformation of politics into branding, and of the nation into a stage set for performance. The White House ballroom, should it be completed, will stand as another symbol in the ongoing project of rebuilding American democracy in the image of one man’s brand.
Debbie Millman is the chair of the masters in branding program at the School of Visual Arts.
Source photograph by Travelpix Ltd/Getty Images.
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