President Donald Trump schemed to keep his violent destruction of the White House’s East Wing hidden from the American public, according to author Michael Wolff.
The president abandoned his earlier promise to leave the East Wing untouched after learning from engineers that the quickest way to complete his $300 million ballroom would be to raze the historic building, Wolff shared on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
“They had a meeting and they said, ‘Listen, it really would be much cheaper and faster just to tear down the East Wing,’” Wolff said, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Rather than weigh the consequences of erasing the 123-year-old building’s history, the president’s first concern was reportedly how to keep its potential destruction hidden from the public.
“[Trump] said—this was given to me as a quote—he said, ‘F—. But can we do the demolition at night?,’“ Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles.
“So the idea would be, Washington would wake up and the East Wing would have evaporated,” Coles said.
Pointing to Trump’s background as a prominent New York City developer, Wolff noted, “That’s a real estate developer trick—what you tear down, you cannot build back. So it’s a fait accompli.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
In the end, Trump’s teardown didn’t start under the cover of the night, but on the morning of Monday, Oct. 20. Still, the public was largely kept in the dark about the damage being done to the “people’s house.”
By the time White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump had changed his mind about preserving the East Wing, the building had already been reduced to twisted metal and rubble.
“The plans changed, and the president heard counsel from the architects and the construction companies, who said that in order for this East Wing to be modern and beautiful for many, many years to come, for it to be a truly strong and stable structure, this Phase 1 that we’re now in was necessary,” Leavitt told reporters on Oct. 23, three days after the demolition began.
Wolff argued that Trump employed the same playbook he has used to bulldoze through the “social, logistical [and] political impediments” he has faced in his second term to make the East Wing demolition happen.
“Imagine the outpouring that there would have been if he said, ‘I’m going to tear down the White House,’” Wolff said.
Trump has carried out the leveling without the usual reviews from federal groups like the National Capital Planning Commission, though even that shouldn’t be a problem.
In July, Trump quietly appointed White House staff secretary Will Scharf, the president’s former personal lawyer, to lead the commission. Scharf has already claimed that the NCPC doesn’t need to weigh in on demolition projects.
On Tuesday, the president fired all members of the Commission of Fine Arts, which was expected to review his construction projects.
While the president has openly boasted that the sound of the demolition is “music” to his ears, there are hints that the public backlash has him worried.
As cranes and backhoes began smashing up windows and ripping away the East Wing’s facade last week, the Trump administration ordered federal employees not to share photos from the demolition. A high fence has since been erected around the site.
Meanwhile, CNN boss Mark Thompson reportedly told the network’s reporters to ease up on coverage of the destruction after he had a VIP visit to the White House on Wednesday. That report, which was revealed by Oliver Darcy’s Status, was denied by CNN.
In the East Wing’s place, Trump is erecting a 90,000 square-foot ballroom that will dwarf the White House’s iconic Executive Residence. He insists his project will be paid for “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”
Trump has shot down reports that he is planning to name the ballroom after himself as “fake news,” saying Friday, “We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
But Wolff said that within the White House, it’s “been official that this will be called the Trump Ballroom.”
The author also suggested that the Trump family is making money off of the ballroom’s construction, which is funded by tech giants such as Google, Palantir, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as private donors.
“They are soliciting money all over the place,” Wolff said. “At what point have you paid for your project 100 percent or do you keep going?”
Coles noted that Trump had increased the estimate for his project—which appears to be dogged by eyebrow-raising flaws—from $100 million to $200 million to $250 million, and now to $300 million.
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