Goodbye, White House. Hello, Trump House.

Elect a would-be dictator, and this is what happens.

by Ryan Cooper
October 24, 2025

The most marked characteristic of the second Donald Trump presidency is the pretense of normality. Just about every day, Trump does something that would have been a world-historical, presidency-ending scandal for any previous president, and the default response—at least from business, universities, the mainstream media, and other elite quarters—is a collective shrug. If Trump were to unhinge his jaw and swallow a live woodchuck during a press conference, the New York Times headline would be “In Washington, Trump Makes Unusual Dining Choice.”

But Trump’s ongoing destruction of the White House might just be different. As I am writing this, a construction crew is finishing the complete destruction of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom called—what else?—“The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” This ballroom will be nearly twice the size of the original White House mansion. My only surprise is he didn’t sell off the naming rights, so it could be the Donald J. Trump Coinbase DraftKings Ticketmaster Ballroom at the White House.

If headlines, social media chatter, and conversation with friends and neighbors are any judge, this is breaking through in a way that little else has in the last nine months. For a while, it seemed like the Epstein files would create this breakthrough, and to an extent it has. But the reaction to the destruction of the East Wing has been surprisingly visceral. A criminal madman who is ineligible to be president is literally and symbolically ripping out the core of American democracy, and replacing it with a hideously gaudy monstrosity, where he will collect billions in bribes. This is what dictatorship feels like, and it’s long since time Americans woke up to this fact.

Trump previously promised that he would not touch the existing building, and as usual he went back on that promise. It’s unclear why he would even lie like that; it’s not like anyone was going to stop him. Nobody said much when he paved over the Rose Garden and put in a Mar-a-Lago-style patio. Indeed, one wonders whether Trump is going to stop with the East Wing. Will he also bulldoze the presidential residence? The West Wing? That has been the site of a great deal of television, the thing that Trump cares about most in the world, but on the other hand he fancies himself a master builder. Perhaps he’d like a new Donald J. Trump Oval Office, ten times the size of the original one, covered from floor to ceiling in crummy gilding and ornaments from Hobby Lobby, that he could rent out to tourists when he takes his Qatari bribe jet overseas.
https://prospect.org/2025/10/24/goodbye-white-house-hello-trump-house/