Editors at National Review Online challenge the notion that President Trump plans to destroy the physical structure of the White House.
Judging by the morose and hysterical rhetoric that has emanated from the Democratic Party and its ideological allies during the past couple of days, one might have thought that President Trump had announced his intention to send a squadron of B-2 bombers across the Potomac to completely level Washington, D.C. Having shared a carefully cropped photograph of construction at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, complained … that, by making his well-publicized changes to the East Wing, Donald Trump is “literally destroying the White House.” In no less an indignant tone, former First Lady Hillary Clinton agreed, griping that “it’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” Elsewhere, Kennedy scion Maria Shriver confessed that the project “breaks my heart and it infuriates me,” while The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last insisted that “razing the Trump ballroom and restoring the White House to pre-Trump status is non-negotiable.” In the usual circles, the usual suspects were thrilled to agree.
Of all the reasons to criticize President Trump, this must count as the silliest. Often, Trump deserves the opprobrium that is cast his way. Here, he most decidedly does not. This, to put it plainly, is a non-story, a freakout, a fiction spun from whole cloth. There is not a grain of truth here, but a vacuum. Trump is replacing a handful of office buildings with a ballroom. That’s it. No more, and no less.
As a general matter, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a president making changes to the White House. Nor, for that matter, is there anything sinister about his approving complicated construction projects that involve the temporary removal of one of its walls. Over the years, presidents of both parties and of all leadership styles have done precisely this, and nobody has cared one whit.
