The East Wing never had a chance

Last week felt genuinely surreal, an unhinged fever dream of the East Wing being torn down, a seemingly friction-free process that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—be stopped by anyone. And in its stead, the world’s tackiest ballroom will arise.

But, like, for real: How did this happen? No, that’s not meant as an existential question about the political direction of the country, but literally, as in what were the mechanics of making this happen?

Turns out that, for President Donald Trump, it was pretty easy. All it took was his patented combination of avarice and cronyism. Well, that and the utter collapse of the morality of people around him. 

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Step one: Get in touch with Meredith O’Rourke. One of Trump’s top fundraisers, O’Rourke—who has no official role in the government—was in charge of hoovering up money for this ballroom monstrosity.  

Thankfully, there is no shortage of corporations willing to routinely throw the sitting president of the United States a few million dollars on the regular. So it was really no problem when the cost of the ballroom went from $100 million to $200 million to $300 million to … do we hear $350 million? America’s most spineless corporations got you covered, Trump. 

Next, find a weirdo Catholic architectural firm to whip up some plans on the cheap, perhaps by using Grok AI or something, because now the plans have a stairway to nowhere. 

That’s plans, plural. As in Trump has waved around multiple renderings of how this will look, including one that defies physics, with two windows overlapping. There’s no real explanation of why McCrery Architects, which mostly builds churches, got tapped for this design gig, but they don’t seem to be meeting the moment. 

Okay, next—if you’re going to tear down the East Wing and build a gold-plated bribe palace in its place, you need to loot it first. So, get some cronies you stashed somewhere deep in the White House Executive Residence Office to agree to empty the East Wing in preparation for the demolition without telling anyone about the demolition. 

Seriously, if America ever emerges from the violent fog of the Trump years, the people who went “sure, I’ll steal what’s worth stealing from the East Wing and keep mum about Trump destroying it” do not belong back in polite society. Ever. 

Okay, after you had your agreeably close-mouthed minions toss the East Wing, how are you going to get this thing torn down without a mountain of paperwork? It seems like even the president has to follow safety and building codes.

Nope! When you’re the president, they let you do it. You can do anything. 

Normal people looked at the demolition of the East Wing and asked, “Hey, shouldn’t an official body, like the National Capital Planning Commission, have to sign off on the demolition?”

No, you sweet summer child. According to Trump and his allies on the NCPC, the planning commission need only sign off on the construction of buildings, not their demolition. 

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What kind of person who heads a planning commission charged with the overall planning of the nation’s capital would agree to this?

Oh, that would be Will Scharf. Scharf is the White House staff secretary, and he is also now the head of the NCPC. Does Scharf have any experience in urban planning or architecture, or anything really? 

Nope. You all get one guess as to why Scharf has not one, but two high-level government jobs? Yes, he was one of Trump’s former criminal defense attorneys. 

Look, when you have that many criminal defense attorneys, you have to put them all somewhere, right? Probably as thanks for being mendacious enough to represent a criminal ex-president all the way back to the White House.

So, now you’ve got Scharf as the head of the NCPC, but that’s a 12-person board, and now they do have to approve the construction of the ballroom. No sweat. First, put two other White House officials in there. Come on down, James Blair and Stuart Levenbach. Then appoint two of your weakest-willed Cabinet members, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and stuff some other minor loyalists somewhere. 

Now you’re set. The chance that anyone allied with Trump is going to stand up to Trump is nil, because the only people left around him are people who would agree to anything. So, the NCPC will rubber-stamp Trump’s Catholic AI Grifter Ballroom Surprise, and it will be a blight on the landscape until someday we get to tear it down.

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