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The destruction of the East Wing of the White House by Donald Trump Oct. 21, 2025.
Trump is wrecking American democracy and it appears that the legal, educational, and media institutions in the US are, so far, incapable of stopping him. On Saturday, 7 million individual American citizens, in 2700 locations across the country, vociferously but peaceably demonstrated against the Trump authoritarian takeover of the country and destruction of the rule of law. The mainstream media mostly ignored this groundswell, but the People still got the message.
Can American democracy survive Trump? One year ago, I would have reflexively said, Yes, of course. Now, ten months into Trump’s second term, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if the republic can survive for another year, when there are to be mid-term elections. At this point, I don’t know if there will be elections, and if there are, that they will be legitimate. Trump is certainly preparing to subvert them, through force of arms if necessary.
The destruction of the East Wing of the White House is a relatively small thing in relation to the dismantling of the republic, but it does have a tremendous symbolic value, and the images of the demolition are an indelible allegory of the Trump administration. As Hillary Clinton put it: “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” The East Wing was first built in 1902 by President Teddy Roosevelt, as an entryway for public visitors, and it was expanded in 1942 during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and historically became the domain of the First Lady and her staff. Trump now says he’ll demolish the entire East Wing to make way for his garish ballroom.
Trump is treating the White House as one of his personal properties, to do with as he likes. He is a “developer” who fancies himself a decorator, but his décor all comes from casinos and tacky hotels. He swore to the public that his plans for a huge ballroom would not disturb any existing parts of the White House. “It’ll be near but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said in July. Just as he promised never to destroy Medicare or Social Security, this turned out to be a bald-faced lie. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt also promised everyone that “nothing will be torn down” during the construction of the ballroom.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the military is involved in the demolition of the East Wing. “We’re also working with the military on it because they want to make sure everything is perfect and the military is very much involved in this and they want to make sure everything is beautiful.” He also lied then that grocery prices are “way down” and that inflation was not affecting prices, while the truth is that inflation rose nearly 3% in August alone and grocery prices continue to rise.
Demolition of the East Wing of the White House began in the middle of the government shutdown when government employees are not being paid and many of them are applying for unemployment benefits.
The 90,000 square-foot rectangle of the ballhall will have four sides of bulletproof glass and is currently projected to cost over $300 million and to be completed by the putative end of Trump’s term, in January 2029. Trump says the ballhall will hold 1000 people, which is 40% more than he said previously, nearly doubling the size of the White House. It will completely change the look and bearing of one of the most iconic buildings in the world, previously known as “The People’s House.”
Early in October, Trump hosted a fundraising dinner at the White House to ask Big Tech oligarchs to fund the ballroom. Attendees included representatives from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin. Crypto entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were also on the guest list of 130 deep-pocket donors.
At the fundraising dinner, Trump also announced his plans to build a monumental triumphal arch, in the style of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, in Washington, DC, across the river from the Lincoln Memorial. When a journalist asked the president who the arch is for, he replied, “Me—it’s going to be beautiful.” The Arc de Trump.
Trump has apparently been thinking about building a White House ballroom for years. Fifteen years ago, in 2010, he called David Axelrod, advisor to President Obama, and offered his services to build a ballroom for them. Trump told Axelrod he should come down to Florida and see some of the great ballrooms Trump had already built there. Axelrod handed the offer off to someone else, who never got back to Trump, and Trump never forgave the slight.
Trump had already paved over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, erected giant flagpoles on the north and south lawns of the White House that make it look like an auto dealership going out of business, and completely transformed the Oval Office by covering everything in gold onlays and trim. He also demoed the bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom.
On the day the demolition of the East Wing began, Trump spoke to Republican senators and congresspeople in what used to be the Rose Garden and called their attention to the sounds of destruction coming from the East Wing: “That’s music to my ears,” he said. “I love that sound. Other people don’t like it . . . When I hear that sound it reminds me of money.”
David Levi Strauss is the author of Co-illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication (The MIT Press, 2020), Photography & Belief (David Zwirner Books, 2020), Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow (Aperture, 2014), From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, with an introduction by John Berger (Aperture 2003, and in a new edition, 2012), and Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia 1999, and a new edition, 2010). In Case Something Different Happens in the Future: Joseph Beuys and 9/11 was published by Documenta 13, and To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, edited by Strauss, Michael Taussig, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Dilar Dirik, was published by Autonomedia in 2016, and in an Italian edition in 2017. The Critique of the Image Is the Defense of the Imagination, edited by Strauss, Taussig, and Wilson, was published by Autonomedia in 2020. He is Chair Emeritus of the graduate program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which he directed from 2007-2021.