Is Donald Trump planning to never leave the White House?
If you were leaving your house in four years, would you start a major renovation? Would you wave in bulldozers and backhoes to knock down walls to make room for an Olympic-sized pool or theatre with the footprint of the Cinesphere?
No. You would accept your time is finite at that address and limit any home improvements to new throw cushions from Ikea. You might paint the shed.
You wouldn’t blow it up with TNT.
It is 1,185 days until the doofus-in-chief is scheduled to vamoose from his own horror show. Not that I’m counting. But now he’s demolishing the East Wing to make room for a State Ballroom with a capacity of 999? Who is he planning to host? Epstein survivors?
What a sad sight it was this week to see construction crews go rogue “Transformers” on the East Wing facade. I get that Melania would rather be in Gaza than her first lady quarters. But isn’t the East Wing her space? What’s next? Will Trump turn one of her walk-in closets at Mar-a-Lago into a tanning salon in the shape of a Big Mac with googly eyes?
Trump isn’t going anywhere. Would he and his mega-donors really pony up $250 million to build a vanity project only to possibly hand over the keys to Gavin Newsom in 2029? Get real. Trump doesn’t spend his own money on Sharpies. But now he’s financing a public edifice?
Why does he even need a State Ballroom? We’ve all seen this maniac dance. He gyrates on the spot as both hands jerk like he’s trying to pump air into balloon animals. He doesn’t need 90,000 square feet to butcher “Y.M.C.A.” He could get his groove on in a broom closet at an actual YMCA.
This ballroom is not for summits with foreign dignitaries — it’s for Barron’s 2032 wedding after the White House is rebranded the Trump House and federal elections are as distant a memory as lawn darts and floppy disks. This ballroom is not for official government business — it’s for scheme-fests with crypto scammers and MAGA influencers and big tech broligarchs. Or job fairs for beauty pageant winners keen on landing senior positions with the Department of Justice.
Can you blow out your hair while indicting Rachel Maddow?
You need not be an aficionado of neoclassical architecture to be saddened by Trump’s latest monstrosity. The footage of the East Wing, built in 1902, getting ripped open like a Christmas present this week reminded me of those National Geographic videos in which a wild beast marks its territory.
This demolition was Trump pissing on history.
And it was more proof he intends to live out his days in the White House.
Now I get why DUI hire Pete Hegseth — shout out to Fark for that one — said it’s totally fine if Trump wants to keep the luxury jet Qatar gifted the president that is now getting refurbished with hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars. Sure, he can take the flying castle after leaving office because … he is never leaving office.
The White House says the new ballroom will be completed before 2029. Right. Trump of all people should know big construction projects always end up costing twice as much and take three times as long.
This ribbon cutting won’t happen until sometime next decade when the Mad King has finished gold-leafing the outside of the White House and Americans are boiling old shoes to feed their families as GDP growth plummets to somewhere between Myanmar and Equatorial Guinea. Under Trump, America’s economy is a bubble about to go kaboom.
And who knows if this ballroom will morph into something else. I can picture Trump wanting another go at the casino business. Or maybe he’ll erect a brothel for his strongman buddies. Or a fancy gulag in which his enemies are chained inside glass dioramas of the Old West and forced to do the Cowboy Cha Cha as Stephen Miller threatens them with a cattle prod.
The red hats insist their hero is just trolling when he hawks 2028 merch or shares bonkers AI videos in which he is a monarch with diarrhea. He is not trolling. He believes he is invincible and above the law. Trump will act in accordance with any dark impulse, whether it is the extrajudicial murder of unidentified people in fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela or turning the East Wing into a bad episode of “Help! I Wrecked My House.”
Donald Trump has never acted presidential. He swats at rules and norms like they are piñatas. He is a petulant toddler with tastes so tacky even the ghost of Liberace is now gagging.
Our only hope was that one day he would go.
Sadly, that is no longer clear.
