Destroying our history is not a metaphor anymore

Salwan Georges/The Washington Post

They started by banning the teaching of critical race theory. Then they didn’t want to hear the word “slavery” anymore. Then it was DEI, anything that touched on the diverse history of our country. No more Black History month, no more talk about Tuskegee Airmen or the women who were crucial to the Manhattan Project. Whole shelves of books were removed from libraries.

Now the assault on our history by Donald Trump is being done with excavators that are ripping, crushing, and destroying by board and nail and wire and window, the East Wing of the White House.

Here is a list of recent presidents who somehow got through their terms in office without ordering the wholesale destruction of the building where they lived and worked: Harry Truman; Dwight D. Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson; Richard Nixon; Gerald Ford; Jimmy Carter; George H. W. Bush; Bill Clinton; George W. Bush; Barack Obama; Joe Biden. There were some minor changes – FDR put in an indoor swimming pool that later became the press room; Truman added a bowling alley; Gerald Ford had an outdoor pool installed; Jimmy Carter built an outdoor tennis court; Obama transformed the tennis court into a basketball court.

None of them drove two excavators onto the grounds of the White House and started ripping down its walls and windows, as Donald Trump began doing to the East Wing yesterday.

When Trump announced that he would construct a 90,000 square foot ballroom on White House grounds, he promised that the White House itself would not be touched. “It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump told reporters in July. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

He was breathing unassisted at the time of that statement, so of course he lied.

The changes Trump has made to the White House could be charitably termed for recreational purposes. Trump ripped out the grass and flowers from the Rose Garden, paved the place, added outdoor tables with yellow-striped umbrellas and renamed it the “Rose Garden Club” where he has held dinners and lunches for members of the House and Senate from the Republican Party, and a dinner for billionaires who have promised donations to his ballroom.

That last event, by the way, is what is typically called a fund raiser. There has never been a fund raiser held at the White House previous to Trump’s September 15 “Legacy Dinner” for 130 business leaders and wealthy donors.

It’s always been something of an anachronism that the White House serves as both the Executive Branch headquarters of the government and the home of whichever president is in office. Great Britain is the only other country where the leader of its government lives and works in the same building, 10 Downing Street in the nation’s capital, London. You look at photographs of the interior of either the White House or 10 Downing Street and they show a rabbit warren of small offices, some of which are windowless, that house the people who work for the most powerful person in either country.

Trump appears to be in the process of transforming the White House into Mar a Lago North, adding gilded gimcrackery to the Oval Office and other rooms in the building. He bragged recently of replacing the floor of the interior passage leading to the Rose Garden with marble tiles, claiming that the previous floor was made of “Home Depot tiles that were cracking and 30 years old.” The artist’s rendering of the proposed ballroom shows a high-ceilinged space the exterior of which some architects have predicted will “dwarf” the rest of the White House.

The White House, it goes without saying, is not owned by Donald Trump. It belongs to the federal government and has traditionally been referred to as “The People’s House.” Numerous stories about the destruction of the East Wing have pointed out that Trump completely ignored the usual process, involving the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission on Fine Arts, for approving changes to the White House. Believing he can do anything he wants, anytime he wants, to anything or anyone he wants, Trump didn’t ask anyone for permission to alter the building which was built by the second president of the United States, John Adams, and was first occupied by Thomas Jefferson in 1801.

But that’s history, someone else’s history. Donald Trump doesn’t care about history. What he cares about is money. Here is what Trump said today at a luncheon for Republican Senators at the so-called Rose Garden Club: “You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back. You hear that sound? Oh, that’s music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people don’t like it. When I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.”

Then he told another lie, because he is Donald Trump and he was still breathing without assistance: “In this case, it reminds me of lack of money because I’m paying for it,” he said.

What he’s going to use his Big Beautiful Ballroom for is fund raisers and state dinners. For Donald Trump, who has been selling access to himself at private dinners for one million dollars a head, even the state dinners will be fund raisers. He’ll charge countries who want their leaders to be honored at the White House, and he’ll sell tickets to people who want to attend the dinners and kiss his ass. He’s going to tack a gaudy, disgusting display of bad taste onto the history of our country and make billions of it. He’s Donald Trump. It’s what he does.