The White House has admitted that the East Wing will be totally demolished to make way for Donald Trump’s new ballroom.
Trump had originally claimed that the 83-year-old building wouldn’t be touched in the construction of the $250 million privately-funded ballroom.
But when a backhoe was pictured on Monday smashing through the walls of the historic building it set off alarm bells.
Now the White House is confirming that it will be cheaper and more structurally sound to demolish the entire wing, rather than build an extension, an official told The New York Times.
The White House was initially cagey about what the plans for the East Wing were, with suggestions that part of the structure would remain intact.
Trump, announcing the ballroom earlier this year, claimed: ‘It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.’
But last week, when he was hosting ballroom donors at a dinner in the East Room, the president appeared to say the quiet part out loud.
Trump opened the gold curtains behind him to unveil the construction site.
‘It will be demolished,’ he said. ‘Everything out there is coming down and it will be replaced by the most beautiful ballroom.’
Donald Trump lights a diya candle during a Diwali celebration in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday
Heavy machinery tears down a section of the East Wing of the White House as construction begins on President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom, in Washington, DC, on Wednesday
The facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on Wednesday
The Times reported that the demolition will be completed by this weekend.
A photograph obtained by journalist Chris Geidner from the vantage point of the Treasury Department on Tuesday showed just three walls of the East Wing still standing.
The demolition has prompted outcry from former East Wing staffers from Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
A number of of former staffers of Republican First Lady Pat Nixon had written to the National Capital Planning Commission to try and get the project stopped, according to East Wing Magazine.
But Trump had already appointed Staff Secretary Will Scharf to lead the NCPC, with Scharf determining the government agency tasked with D.C.-area federal construction, did not oversee demolitions just construction.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the ballroom project would be submitted to the NCPC, which traditionally keeps historic preservation in mind before green-lighting a proposal.
Democrats see a political opening from the optics of the project, which is happening amid a government shutdown that is seeing federal workers go without pay.
‘I genuinely think the images of them destroying the East Wing of the White House could be a game changer in the elections,’ former Biden White House official Neera Tanden posted to X on Wednesday.
She included polling data that showed Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger besting Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears by 13 points.
Conservative Washington Examiner columnist Byron York even gave the White House some grief for the lack of transparency.
‘The president needs to tell the public now what he is doing with the East Wing of the White House. And then tell the public why he didn’t tell them before he started doing it,’ York posted to X Tuesday night.
When the ballroom project was announced in July, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked point blank if the East Wing would be demolished for the massive ballroom.
She answered that the ‘necessary construction will take place’ and the East Wing will be ‘modernized.’
This week the White House has pushed out a furious response against the outcry, sending out a press release Tuesday to reporters blasting ‘unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies’ for creating ‘manufactured outrage’ over the East Wing’s demolition.
The press release included historical photographs showing previous demolitions and construction projects at the White House dating back to 1902.
