Like all things Trumpian, it’s about as subtle as a wrecking ball: A lavish ballroom, bigger than a football field, with aspirations of Versailles and shades of Caesars Palace. Visitors to the Oval Office in recent months have been shown models of President Trump’s plans for the East Wing; according to the resident Mad King, everyone liked the larger version now estimated to cost $350 million—and with another surprise, a glass bridge connecting it to the main residence. What’s next, a putting green or a lazy river on the front lawn?
We were assured the ballroom would be an add-on, that the East Wing would remain intact. But what’s the value of Trump’s word? Certainly not $350 million.
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The expert-builder–turned-world-leader now says that, to maintain the architectural integrity of the new venue, we need a total teardown—but it’s nothing to worry about. As he told reporters, it’s just a “small building” that was “never thought of as much.”
Trump didn’t seek permission from any of the historical preservation societies and commissions that watch over these things, of course, because he thinks he knows best. Besides, he can fire anyone who disagrees with him, and he’s already stacked any commission that matters with allies ready to give him what he wants.
The East Wing is “a historical part of the White House,” said Paul Costello in an e-mail. He worked there for Rosalynn Carter and recalls after her husband, President Jimmy Carter, lost his re-election campaign in 1980, “we had a very dejected and deflated staff meeting in the East Wing conference room. Rosalynn was stoic but obviously quite sad—yet she tried to comfort us.”
There had been happy moments too, celebrating with a glass of wine after a successful State dinner was over, for example. “I was always in awe walking through the East Gate to my second floor office,” Costello recalled. “It was never ever just an office, it was the White House.”
““What memories were vanquished? What ghosts have nowhere to roam?””— Paul Costello
I remember sitting with a Newsweek colleague in an alcove there for an interview with Nancy Reagan. It was late in the year of 1981, but the assassination attempt made some months earlier on her husband was clearly front of mind; for someone who’d been in public life for decades, I noticed how nervous and unsettled she seemed.
When it later became a mini scandal that she had relied on astrology to guide the president’s travel, scrambling plans and creating problems, I looked back at that interview and could empathize with her need for reassurance. Asked to sum up her first year as First Lady, she had struggled to find the words. When I interjected that it must have been a roller coaster, she agreed.
The East Wing had long been the domain of the First Lady, and we can thank FDR for that, though his focus when he had it constructed in 1942 was the bunker beneath. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who claimed the space as an “activist hub” where she could meet with people “and have more detailed conversations about the war and domestic policy and confronting fear,” Allida Black, a professor at George Washington University, told the Daily Beast.
But times have changed—over the years, not every FLOTUS has wanted to be relegated to the wifely side of the White House. It was major news when Hillary Clinton got an office in the West Wing—the first First Lady to crash her husband’s domain. It didn’t turn out too well after her health care plan failed, but at least she tried. Melania Trump, meanwhile, has barely bothered to show up at the White House, neglecting whatever space she was allotted in the East Wing.
Black called the destruction of the East Wing “an abomination… a physical erasure of the women who gave their lives to this country, and their staffs.”
It’s been remarkable how little resistance there has been to Trump’s authoritarian moves. A recent report in The Wall Street Journal said Trump was “shocked” at how easy his takeover has been. Maybe the demolishment of the East Wing will be different, however. Its wanton destruction provides a visual image to accompany the damage he is causing in the lives of Americans as he dismantles the government they have relied upon.
For Democrats, it’s an opportunity to contrast a president who promised to bring down the cost of living and represent middle-class America with the president who, per his own press secretary, cares first and foremost about his shiny new ballroom amid a painful shutdown. At the very least, this is not a good look for Trump. But will it motivate a shellshocked electorate to turn to the polls? Or has Trump so damaged the foundations of our country and the White House that he can get away with this bloodied but unbowed?
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