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**OCTOBER 24, 2025**

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Since Trump took office again, there has been a bewildering lack of reaction to his heinous abuses. During the Obama years, the media would throw a fit over him wearing a tan suit, but today, Trump can issue endless pardons to allies and it merits one story at most. But reality of what Trump is—an aspiring tinpot dictator straight out of central casting—might be sinking in [link removed] with what he is doing to the White House. After promising not to touch the building, he has torn down the entire East Wing to make room for a monstrous ballroom named after himself. It’s a lesson into why dictatorship is bad that all too many Americans need.

**–Ryan Cooper, senior editor**

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Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

Goodbye, White House. Hello, Trump House. [link removed]

The most marked characteristic of the second Donald Trump presidency is the pretense of normality. Just about every day, Trump does something that would have been a world-historical, presidency-ending scandal for any previous president, and the default response—at least from business, universities, the mainstream media, and other elite quarters—is a collective shrug. If Trump were to unhinge his jaw and swallow a live woodchuck during a press conference, the

**New York Times** headline would be “In Washington, Trump Makes Unusual Dining Choice.”

But Trump’s ongoing destruction of the White House might just be different. As I am writing this, a construction crew is finishing the complete destruction of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom called—what else?—“The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” This ballroom will be nearly twice the size of the original White House mansion. My only surprise is he didn’t sell off the naming rights, so it could be the Donald J. Trump Coinbase DraftKings Ticketmaster Ballroom at the White House.

If headlines, social media chatter, and conversation with friends and neighbors are any judge, this is breaking through in a way that little else has in the last nine months. For a while, it seemed like the Epstein files would create this breakthrough, and to an extent it has. But the reaction to the destruction of the East Wing has been surprisingly visceral. A criminal madman who is ineligible to be president [link removed] is literally and symbolically ripping out the core of American democracy, and replacing it with a hideously gaudy monstrosity, where he will collect billions in bribes. This is what dictatorship feels like, and it’s long since time Americans woke up to this fact.

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