Demolishing the Presidency

A White House teardown ordered by a reckless child is the perfect metaphor

Donald Trump has done far, far worse things. But images of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, including water being sprayed throughout to douse the debris, were viscerally appalling. Maybe it was the resemblance to the damage wrought to the Pentagon on 9/11. Maybe it was an instinctive defense of a national symbol—last destroyed by a monarch in the 1812 war. In any event, the Trump regime have royally screwed up.

“The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Treasury’s headquarters is located next door to the East Wing, giving employees there a front-row seat to the construction of President Trump’s $250 million ballroom. The new project is set to replace parts of the East Wing.” To add insult to injury to the Republic, tony donors (including Comcast, Meta, Open AI, and Palantir, among too many others to list) happy to place business before the government are footing the bill—and getting a snazzy thank you dinner where they can hobnob with Trump.

Trump promised this sort of desecration would not occur. But, as we know too well, the lifespan of his promises is a nanosecond. A leaked memo telling employees not to release damaging images is the sort of internal rebellion that a White House literally falling apart must dread.

The physical destruction of the White House is about as giant a metaphor as one can get. If suggested in a movie script, the demolition of the People’s House—an architectural symbol of our democracy—so that it can incorporate an ostentatious, disproportionate, gaudy ballroom designed by a tasteless real estate developer bent on transforming the presidency into an autocracy would be dismissed as clumsy, preposterous, and improbable. But it is pure Trump, as is the garish faux gold ornamentation he has plastered all over the Oval Office.

The cheap Versailles redecoration, an attempted throwback to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV, commencing during a government shutdown fight over stripping health care coverage away from millions of people sounds like something dreamt up by a Democratic consultant. But it is of a piece with the recent string of moronic moves by a White House apparently in the grips of panic.

When you resort to a vulgar AI video (“not only juvenile but also betray[ing] striking contempt for tens of millions of Americans he ostensibly leads and for the concept of democratic free speech,” as CNN’s Stephen Collinson observed), or when you insist that the images of millions of No Kings protesters blanketing social and legacy media are fake, you give the impression you are not only crass and delusional, but panicked.

Don’t forget his jaw-droppingly irresponsible stunt, the Marines’ exercise of “firing high explosive rounds from M777 Howitzers” over a major California freeway that—no surprise!—ended in disaster. “California officials expressed fears about those live rounds being fired over Interstate 5, which runs between the beach where the ‘landing’ was taking place and the rest of the sprawling military installation,” the Los Angeles Times reported. With no notice and with drivers on the freeway, the Marines starting firing artillery rounds over the I-5, making Gov. Gavin Newsom close 17 miles of interstate, but not before shrapnel hit a California Highway Patrol vehicle “after an artillery round exploded mid-air, far earlier than intended, forcing an early end to the artillery demonstration.” The debacle left everyone (other than MAGA delinquents) wondering who in the world could have thought it “wise to fire live munitions over a freeway.”

Trump surely has ample reason to freak out. An embarrassing “36% of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy,” the most recent Associated Press-NORC poll shows. And his support among Republicans barely clears 70%, deemed as “relatively low in ways that could be problematic for Republicans in next month’s races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and perhaps even in the 2026 midterm elections.” If 68% of Americans think the economy is poor and 58% blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown a “great deal” or “quite a bit,” and a strong plurality trust Democrats more to handle healthcare, no amount of hysterical propaganda within the sealed right-wing media ecosphere will save Republicans at the polls. (That AP/NORC poll, incidentally, is no outlier. CNBC reported: “The -13 net approval on the economy is the lowest of any CNBC survey during either of Trump’s two terms.”)

This litany of outrages only add to an already robust-list of assaults (e.g., military deployments and violent ICE attacks in U.S. cities, vindictive prosecutions, illegal attacks on boats and murders on the high seas), screw-ups (e.g., inflation-producing tariffs), and tone-deaf political responses. Taken together, they reveal a regime wildly out of control. Trump seems simultaneously unhinged and plagued by humiliating self-owns, unsure whether to ignore or defame the growing opposition, and shackled to positions that are both unpopular and counterproductive.

Trump knows only how to seek vengeance and create chaos, so expect him to double down on constitutional outrages, vulgar insults, and utter dysfunction. Whatever people voted for, this is what they have gotten.