Trump to demolish entire East Wing of White House this weekend

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House, a dramatic reversal from his previous promise to leave the historic building alone as he presses ahead with installing a massive new ballroom.

The east wing, which was built in 1902 and expanded in 1942, is expected to be completely torn down this weekend, according to a New York Times report. Washington Post similarly reported that a White House spokesman said “the entirety” of the East Wing would be rebuilt.

Trump confirmed his plans at the White House on Wednesday night.

“We determined that, after a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that actually tearing it down, trying to use a small section, you know, the east wing, wasn’t much,” he said. said in comments in the Oval Office.

It’s unclear who these supposed architects are or how there could have been an enormous amount of study on this, given how quickly Trump has moved forward with his plans. Demolition of the The east wing began on Monday, and the White House has yet to submit any plans to the federal agency that oversees the construction of federal buildings.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump originally said he wouldn’t touch the East Wing at all when he announced his renovation plans in July, saying the building was “my favorite.”

“It will be beautiful,” he said then. “It won’t interfere with the existing building. It won’t be; it will be close to it, but not touching it. And it totally respects the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite.”

The Washington Post via Getty Images

The president has been eager to set up his 90,000-square-foot, $250 million event space in the White House. White House officials have always been coy about how far Trump planned to go with his renovations to make way for him, and apparent Trump supporters on social media have been downplaying his plans.

Trump maintains that the project will be paid for with private donations and his own money, and not public dollars. bBut it hasn’t released a full list of who pays for this or how much they spend. One of the companies that finances it is YouTube, which will donate $22 million to the project. That money comes from a recent settlement of a 2021 lawsuit Trump filed against YouTube, a Google subsidiary.

The president does not appear to be breaking the law by doing this, as outrageous as it is. But he has certainly manipulated the process to make it work in his favor.

Triumph did not get approval for the demolition of the National Capital Planning Commission, the executive branch agency with jurisdiction over construction and major renovations of government buildings in DC. But the person who heads that commission has said it’s fine, and it happens to be one of Trump’s top advisers and his former personal lawyer, Will Scharf.

Scharf, whom Trump appointed to this position in July, just as the president announced his renovation plans, has stated that the commission should only examine reconstruction work, not demolition.

via News

The lack of transparency in this process continues to enrage historic preservationists and people with eyes, as photos of the destroyed east wing on social media show.

the naNational Trust for Historic Preservation, a leading preservation organization created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, warned on tuesday that Trump’s planned ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.

At least one Republican senator is unhappy that Trump decided to destroy the White House in the middle of an ongoing government shutdown, during which the president has done nothing to help resolve it.

“It’s not the right time,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R.N.C.) he told News themezone on Tuesday.

“We’re in the middle of a shutdown,” he said. “There are a couple more things we should probably focus on before a construction project.”