That said, 3 in 10 Americans approve — including a majority of Republicans. There’s an interesting age split in the YouGov data, with older Americans being more likely to express approval of the destruction, almost certainly a function of the fact that older Americans are more likely to be Republican.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the significance of that support, though. A third of Republicans strongly approve of Trump simply smashing the East Wing into rubble, something that it is extremely safe to assume they would have viewed more skeptically had it been undertaken by, say, Barack Obama. Condemnation from Democrats would likely have been more modest under such circumstances, sure … but no Democratic president would have suddenly taken a wrecking ball to the White House without notice. (Harry Truman, a Democrat, did oversee a renovation of the building, but he did so with guidance and input from appointed officials and experts.)
[…]
It is not the case that support for the destruction of the East Wing is a function of people not understanding what happened. YouGov asked Americans whether they’d seen images or video of the building being demolished. Six in 10 Americans said they had, including a majority of Republicans. In other words, at least some (but probably quite a few) Republicans saw the destruction with their own eyes and approved.
One takeaway here is that the demolition of the East Wing is unpopular. But another is that this, too, has collapsed into a partisan framework. An action that would almost certainly have met with condemnation if suggested to Trump voters in October 2024 is, in October 2025, viewed positively for little more reason than that Trump did it.
If the destruction of a substantial portion of the White House is an on-the-nose metaphor for Trump’s attack on American democracy, consider how we might extrapolate Republican support for his doing so.
Oh, it’s not hard to figure. They just love Trump and anything he does and it thrilled them to see him destroying something that other people love.