If you thought that #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump's tarting-up
of the Oval Office with garish gold gew-gaws was THE metaphor for
his profoundly awful presidency, a newer and far worse metaphor
has hit the news over the past few days: the destruction of the historic East Wing of the White
House in order to build an obscene gilded grand ballroom (or should that be gallroom?) that is nearly twice the
size of the existing White House. Current price tag is $300
million, up from the $200 million originally announced. Trump
claims that it will be totally funded by him and some of his
bestest oligarch buddies. You have his word on it.
Along with countless others, my favorite foul-mouthed pundit Jeff Tiedrich pointed out that
besides being a metaphor for Trump's wrecking of the country so
he can rebuild it in his image, this atrocity is also yet another
example of Trump's endless stream of lies.
“it won’t interfere with the current building. it’ll be near it but not touching it. and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. it’s my favorite.” [That's what Trump originally promised.]
oh gee, who even knew that Donny had a favorite wing of the White House — the east one. yeah, right. just like Cokey McSniffles is his favorite son. totally credible remark.
so, it turns out that the guy who lied to us about bone spurs and hush money and his Ukraine phone call and a hurricane and covid and the election and his height and his weight and his golf scores and his magically regenerated ear also lied to us about preserving the East Wing.
I’m fucking shocked, I tell you. how did we Nazi this coming?
Yet Trump took umbrage when a reporter suggested that he had been less than transparent about the ballroom plans. Tiedrich continued:
reporter: “I just want a quick follow-up to that question. your response to people who say you haven’t been transparent enough about this—”
Donny: “I haven’t been transparent enough? really? I’ve shown this to everybody that would listen. third-rate reporters didn’t see it because they didn’t look. you’re a third-rate reporter. always have been.”
what a whiny fucking crybaby. ‘everyone has to love my vulgar dance hall, and you’re a third-rate poopyhead if you don’t.’
oh, boo fucking hoo.
here’s what our Fuckstain-in-Chief calls ‘being transparent’: he held up a drawing of some gaudy gold monstrosity — and then raged because every reporter didn’t immediately burst into tears and go ‘sir! thank you for your transparency. how do you do it? how do you hold up a drawing like no one thought possible? sir! sir!’
In an eloquent piece on the Lincoln Square Substack on October 23, writer Rick Wilson lamented the utter obscenity of it all.
Donald Trump didn’t just misunderstand the East Wing; he loathes the category of things it represents.
He walked into a cathedral with a bullhorn, spray paint, and faux gold leaf. He saw a place designed for civic honor, official tenderness, and historical respect and wondered why it didn’t look more like a casino atrium, a glittery Liberace dreamscape.
The East Wing, under Melania Trump, became a mood board for grievance. The holiday corridors turned into a fever dream of performative menace, a pomo aesthetic that screamed more threat than holiday spirit. The Social Office, traditionally where protocol breathes, is now one more wing of the Department of Trolling, a conveyor belt of grotesque events staged not as acts of national hospitality but as moments for the Dear Leader to caper while his minions offer proofs of loyalty.
The White House grounds have become a gimcrack stage set, a regional dinner theater of the absurd.
It’s American malaise dressed up as blaring pageant: a stripper-pole segment added to a ballet, a spiritual emptiness that comes when a man confuses himself with a country and then tries to decorate the void in more and more gold leaf and Temu-grade gradeau.
The conservative Bulwark had a few words about the matter too, discussing on an October 23 piece the fact that Trump apparently sees the physical history of the People's House in much the same way that he views the nation's laws, as something to be swept aside at will. In a segment headlined "The Asbestos Wing," Bill Kristol wrote about why Trump broke his promise that the White House wouldn't be touched by construction of the new ballroom.
But that pledge by the President is no longer operative. Why not? Well, Trump explained yesterday, the East Wing “was never thought of as being much. It was a very small building.”
Very small is bad. Very big is good. And so Donald Trump decided that the small old East Wing would be summarily replaced by a big new ballroom.
What, you ask, will that grand structure be called? Did you have to ask? According to the pledge agreement sent to donors, they’ll be contributing to the construction of ”The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.”
Eeesh. And unless you're a devoted MAGA cultist, the implications are grim.
Trump... as he sat Tuesday at his desk in his newly gilded Oval Office, looking out on his paved-over Rose Garden, not far from where he plans to build his new imitation of the Arc de Triomphe, said this: “We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again. We just can’t let that happen. I know Kash is working on it, everybody is working on it. And certainly Tulsi is working on it. We can’t let that happen again to our country.”
Unlike Lincoln, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to imagine himself a mere temporary inhabitant of the building in which he resides. He apparently doesn’t intend to allow for the defeat of the incumbent administration, and a peaceful transfer of power, in November, 2028.
But the grand ballroom is far more than just an ugly metaphor for an ugly "presidency." There's almost certainly much more going on beneath the surface -- literally. From CBS News, October 22, 2025:
The bunker under the East Wing will also be upgraded, sources told CBS News. The White House Military Office is handling the renovation of the bunker, which is known as the President's Emergency Operations Center.
Commentator Glee Violette, on an October 23, 2025 Facebook post, wrote:
Trump will use ANY means - ANY MEANS - to hold on to the office this time around. He has proven that. He has three goals that motivate him - personal power, wealth, and revenge. Nothing he does is for the MAGA folks - they are just his pawns. And he is not here to make America "great", but to PLUNDER it and OWN it.
So, there must be NO midterm elections next year. [To stop them] he needs war-time conditions. And that war will be RIGHT HERE. So he needs himself a proper bunker. Not the 60 year old WWII bunker he hid in last time. A lavish, opulent, HUGE bunker, in the style to which he has become accustomed.
Oh, and the Ballroom he is building over it will be a nice place to serve as a proper Great Hall and Throne Room, afterwards, in order to receive tributes from future supplicants, as well.
If you think that sounds like mere leftist
hysteria or conspiranoia, you haven't been paying attention. Read
the rest of Glee's post for a list of some of the most egregious
violations of U.S. and international law being committed by the
bellicose, power-hungry Trump regime.
The White House desecration may seem like a non-issue or at least a minor matter in the larger scheme of things; in fact, MAGA by and large seems totally
on-board with it. (These are the same folks who got all bent out
of shape when Cracker Barrel changed its logo and some of its
interior decor; they heralded those changes as the end of American culture
and the takeover of evil wokeness. They screamed and shouted and wept and whined until Cracker Barrel ultimately changed the logo back.) But the vulgarization of the White House? Hey, let Donald be Donald. It's trivial.
But what is being done to the
People's House is hardly trivial: it is both an ugly metaphor and, very likely, an
ominous sign of things to come.
P.S. Getty Images offers a pictorial demolition diary.
If you have any love of American history and ideals, it will make
you sad.
Before you leave...
While money cannot make some
nightmares go away, be they political or personal, it can make
them far easier to bear. With my husband Ron's passing in
February 2025, I have experienced significant income loss and am
scrambling to find more work, but in an industry increasingly
being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. And now that I
am making a major move, which is never cheap, donations are
urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to
do it:
- New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
- New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
- Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.
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