We Will Tear Down the Trump Palace Ballroom and Casino

1. Demolition

I know we talked about this yesterday. And Mona has a very fine piece on it today. But I’m obsessed with Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House.

Have you ever tried to put an addition on your home? How long did the process take? You have to:

• Decide what you want to do.

• Decide on an architect to design the job.

• Go through the design process to settle on a final project.

• Bid out the project to at least three contractors.

• Go through the financing approval process.

• Go through regulatory approval for permitting.

That’s months and months of work before you hammer in a single nail. And somehow Trump is doing demo work on a project that will dwarf the White House just nine months into his term.

Is a president really allowed to do this?

This is a serious question: Is the president the owner of the White House? Can he do literally anything he wants to it? Could he knock down the whole thing and replace it with a ten-story Brutalist cube?

I guess so.

The good news is this means that the next Democratic inhabitant of the White House can demolish the Trump Presidential Palace Ballroom and Casino and restore the East Wing and the rest of the White House grounds to their pre-Trump state.

I can already hear the normie objections.

• Tearing down the structure is a waste of resources. Once a thing is built, you keep it and use it.

• Making the Trump teardown a priority would needlessly antagonize Republicans.

• Where would President Newsom get the money for the project?

• The entire thing would be a distraction from the president’s agenda of making a Real Difference in the Lives of Americans.

Well, allow me to retort: ...