OPINION:
Back in August, when President Trump announced his plans to build a massive addition to the White House, The Washington Post penned a piece headlined, “Trump is rushing to build his ballroom. A review process could take years.”
The piece was a tutorial on the bureaucratic red tape that has wrapped the nation’s capital like an Egyptian mummy. Noting that the project needs a “rigorous review process,” the piece cited the American Institute of Architects as the “perpetual guardian of the White House’s architectural integrity.” Gotta get their approval, right?
The Post also declared that large projects at the White House must, by law, go through a four-step review, each ending with a public meeting before the National Capital Planning Commission. Mr. Trump needed approval from the commission, plus the National Park Service, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the Office of Management and Budget and the Facilities Management Office.
Or not. On Monday, the president brought an excavator onto the White House grounds and sheared off the side of the East Wing. There. Done. Project underway.
Liberals lost their minds over the renovation. “First Trump’s mob attacked the Capitol for the first time since 1812. And now Trump is doing more damage to the White House than the British did in 1814,” legal writer Marcy Wheeler wrote on X.
Hillary Clinton, whose husband installed a running track around the south driveway, poked her fat nose into the fray, writing on X: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.”
And the ever-petulant Jim Acosta, a former CNN White House correspondent, wrote on X, “So any president can just start destroying portions of the White House? Is that how this works?”
Actually, that IS how it works.
Let’s get the facts straight: the Trump Ballroom — clocking in at a cool $250 million and paid for entirely by private donations — will span 90,000 square feet and accommodate up to 650 people. Compare that with the East Room, the largest room in the White House, which, at less than 3,000 square feet, can hold only about 250 people.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The outrage machine would have you believe this is unprecedented presidential overreach. Except it’s not. Not even close.
President Truman didn’t just add a room; he gutted the entire place after plaster started falling from the ceiling in 1947. The house was literally in danger of collapse. Truman evacuated the residence, stripped it down to the studs and lived across the street at Blair House for three years.
President Theodore Roosevelt added the entire West Wing in 1902 and modernized the whole operation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the East Wing in 1942, ostensibly for the first lady’s offices but really to cover construction of an underground bunker, which is now the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower added a putting green. First lady Jackie Kennedy redesigned the Rose Garden. Lady Bird Johnson overhauled the East Garden. President Ford installed an outdoor swimming pool. President Nixon put the press briefing room over the pool installed by FDR.
The White House has been under construction, in one form or another, since Thomas Jefferson added colonnades. It’s not a museum frozen in amber; it’s a living, working residence that requires constant maintenance and updates.
In case you’re reading only liberal sites, the East Wing offices remain intact. The facade was removed to connect the new ballroom with the existing wing. That’s it.
Mr. Trump is doing what every president before him has done: making improvements to the White House that reflect the needs of the modern presidency. The difference? He’s doing it with private money, and he’s doing it his way. Oh, and he’s Donald Trump. Anyone clutching their pearls over it either doesn’t know their history or is choosing to ignore it.
Mr. Trump, author of “The Art of the Deal,” had his own take on the renovation. “You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “You hear that sound? Oh, that’s music to my ears. I love that sound,” he said. “Other people don’t like it. When I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.”
Every future president will thank him for building a world-class ballroom, and we taxpayers also should thank him for not spending our money.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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