Trump’s White House Demolition Will Be Televised

Since President Trump announced his plan to build a White House ballroom this summer, members of his administration have been making contradictory remarks about what that means for the East Wing.

In July, Trump promised the project “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.”

But that same month, the White House put out a press release that said, “The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits.”

So understandably, people were caught off-guard when they saw a backhoe tearing through the outer façade of the East Wing on October 20.

The administration’s stance on what we’re supposed to know about this project has been similarly confusing. Trump talks about the ballroom all the time and even alluded to the demolition during an unrelated White House event on Monday, saying, “You know, we’re building right behind us, we’re building a ballroom.”

However, after images of the White House destruction went viral, the Treasury Department told employees not to share photos of the view from its headquarters, which is next to the East Wing. The Wall Street Journal reported:

“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote on Monday evening in an email to department employees viewed by The Wall Street Journal. A Treasury Department spokesman said the email was sent to employees because photos could “potentially reveal sensitive items, including security features or confidential structural details.”

But images of the East Wing in ruins couldn’t be all that sensitive, since White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a photo himself:

By Tuesday, Treasury’s apparent attempt to conceal the extent of the White House destruction had backfired completely. Multiple media outlets ran live feeds of the East Wing’s walls crumbling to the ground.

If anything, the edict only drew more attention to the secrecy around the ballroom project. While the White House has vaguely described the project, detailed architectural plans have not been released. And while federal law says the National Capital Planning Commission must vet even relatively minor construction and renovation projects at the White House, the project has not been submitted to the board.

That may sound kind of illegal, and indeed experts have alleged that the White House is violating federal law by moving forward with the ballroom project. But Trump-appointed National Capital Planning Commission chair Will Scharf, who is also a top White House aide, recently claimed the board only has jurisdiction over construction at federal buildings, not destruction.

And, according to Cheung, people who care about destroying the “People’s House” without any oversight are all “losers” anyway:

Previous presidents must be surprised to learn that Team Trump would have been totally cool with them bulldozing huge sections of the White House!