Not even historic trees are safe from President Donald Trump’s path of destruction at the White House.
Satellite imagery shows that six trees, including southern magnolias commemorating presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were axed or removed from the White House grounds this week as Trump abruptly demolished the East Wing.
First lady Florence Harding planted the tree that would later be commemorated in her husband’s honor on March 29, 1922, during a photographed ceremony.
Also gone from the White House grounds is the magnolia honoring Roosevelt, the architect behind the New Deal and U.S. president for much of World War II.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Planet Labs PBC
Roosevelt’s magnolia, planted in 1942, is no longer visible in satellite images or in photographs of the flattened East Wing.
Also missing is a Yoshino cherry tree that first lady Jill Biden and the former first lady of Japan, Kishida Yuko, planted in 2023.
At least three other trees and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden—the late first lady’s other iconic garden on the White House grounds to be defiled by Trump—appear to have faced the same fate as the rest of the East Wing.
The rapid demolition has resulted in the White House losing at least six trees, a garden, the family theater, the Office of the First Lady, the East Colonnade, the East Garden Room, and the White House’s eastern entrance.
The East Wing is where public tours of the White House began and where celebrities, dignitaries, and foreign leaders entered to attend state dinners and other receptions.
ABC News reports that trees outside the East Wing were chopped down or relocated about a month before this week’s demolition of the building. The White House has not said what has become of the trees.
It removed the famed “Jackson Magnolia” earlier this year—the oldest tree on the grounds, which had become a safety issue—and replaced it with a sapling of the historic tree in the same place.
Trump, who promised this summer that he would not touch the existing White House to build his pet project, has said little about what will become of the space known as the East Wing since 1902.
An administration official said the East Wing will be “modernized and rebuilt,” but there is no timeline—or renderings—to show when that will be accomplished or what the space’s MAGA facelift will look like.
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