No, terrorists did not fly a plane into the East Wing
It is often suggested that being the object of barbs at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner cemented Donald Trump’s resolve to seek the White House in 2016. Being lampooned by the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, especially gnawed at the host of “The Apprentice.” That and Seth Meyers’s surprise that Trump was running as a Republican when Meyers thought he was “running as a joke.”
Trump bowed out of the 2012 race two weeks after his public roasting. But Trump meant to get even and here we are.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that 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 [Monday] dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.” Treasury sits across the drive from the East Wing.
The Hill reports, that “wrecking of part of the White House’s East Wing to make way for President Trump’s ballroom is striking a nerve with his critics who see it as an overhaul of a historic building for a gaudy personal project.”
Gaudy? Google “Oval Office” and “whore house.”
The White House brags that Trump’s $250 million ballroom will be built with donated private monies (from corporations and billionaires). Former Bush II chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter calls the project “an ethics nightmare.” Pundit David Frum on Tuesday reframed the privately funded vanity project as demolishing the East Wing to erect “a monument to bribery.”
The Bulwark’s JV Last advises that Democrats should make restoring the White House and grounds to its pre-Trump state a 2028 campaign issue.
“Trump’s transformation of the People’s House into a presidential palace is undemocratic,” Last writes. “Presidents are not kings. Erasing this monstrosity is fundamental statement about the right-ordering of our project in self-government.”
The White House dismissed public dismay over the demolition as “manufactured outrage” by “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies.” Trump previously pledged that the ballroom addition would not touch the existing structure.
Uh-huh.
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