The front page of Friday’s Washington Post summed up another chaotic, Trumpian week in the capital: “The East Wing is now only a memory.”
It was only four days earlier that Post reporters were tipped off that a wrecking crew was tearing down part of the White House, even as President Donald Trump had previously said his plans for a 90,000 square-foot ballroom wouldn’t “interfere with the current building.” By Monday afternoon, reporters Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond revealed the extent of the demolition, complete with a tipster’s photo, and set in motion a media frenzy to chronicle a 123-year-old section of the White House, home to the offices of the First Lady, being reduced to rubble.
The sudden demolition of a whole section of an historical structure was bad enough, especially without consulting Congress or the public. But Trump razing the East Wing in a stealth manner made the move significantly worse. And in a week when Trump posted an AI video of himself dumping poop on the American people who were out protesting his policies, that was hard to do.
“Maybe it’s just the dislike of change on my part, but it seemed painful, almost like slashing a Rembrandt painting,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Or defacing a Michelangelo’s sculpture.”
Reporting by The Post and others brought Trump’s demolition from behind fences and into the light.
“Frankly, it’s just great beat reporting to start,” Peter Spiegel, the Post’s managing editor, told TheWrap. Spiegel touted the paper’s range of coverage all week, from breaking news and architecture criticism, to compelling videos and a metro story on how the construction fence became “a surprise tourist attraction.”
The public deserves to know if the president is dramatically reshaping the “People’s House,” and reporters set out to do just that. From on-the-ground reports to satellite shots, along with tough questions posed to the president and press secretary, journalists, from the Post and elsewhere, aggressively pursued historic changes to the White House.
Spiegel said the Post’s demolition coverage, featuring shocking photos and videos, “just hits you in the gut.”
Of course, policy debates, while consequential, are less likely to capture the public’s attention as seeing a chunk of the most famous house in America, and perhaps, the world, being bulldozed. It’s a visceral story, and one that reverberated beyond the news pages and into pop culture, with late-night hosts feasting on Trump’s teardown.
“At this point, should we even believe that this is going to end up being a ballroom?” asked Stephen Colbert. “It could just as easily end up being a combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell.”
Covering the story hasn’t been easy. After that news broke, the White House tried to minimize what quickly blew up into a national scandal by banning photos of the construction site. The Post reported earlier this week that the Treasury Department — which has a good view of the demolition — “instructed employees not to take and share photos of the White House construction without permission, while CNN’s Jim Sciutto noted Thursday that the US Secret Service closed access to Ellipse Park, a public park “where journalists had been capturing live images of the East Wing demolition.” (A USSS spokesperson told TheWrap the park was closed for a “routine security patrol” and reopened shortly after.)
Meanwhile, on Thursday, CNN’s Kit Maher found construction workers’ unwilling to speak to reporters. “We’re not allowed to answer questions,” one told her. A White House official told CNN it was standard to require workers to sign NDAs.
Trump gushed this week about hearing “the beautiful sound of construction” and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the White House’s handling of the demolition, including when CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang asked, “Can the president tear down anything he wants without oversight, can he demolish this building or say, the Jefferson Memorial?”
Leavitt maintained that the White House was not legally bound to submit construction plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, and also pointed out that past administrations have made structural changes to the White House. Following Leavitt’s defense, Jiang responded, “So, it sounds like the answer is, ‘Yes, he can tear down whatever he wants.’”
It’s true that previous occupants of the White House have made changes; indeed, the press briefing room was once the site of a swimming pool. And Trump, who made his mark in real estate, has already been embarking on an extreme makeover of the White House, from the gilding of the Oval Office to the overhaul of Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden with a Mar-a-Lago style patio. Trump, too, has insisted he’s been up front throughout the ballroom construction process, calling a Reuters reporter “third rate” for asking him about criticism he hasn’t been transparent.
Regardless of Team Trump’s defenses, the public and press clearly was not expecting the president to quickly, and fully, demolish the East Wing as part of a project that has already ballooned from $200 million to $300 million in a matter of months. More details came this week when the White House announced that wealthy supporters, like Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Miriam Adelson, along with major corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Meta, Comcast and Meta, were donating to the project.
The story is a reminder, just over a week after Pentagon reporters turned in their badges rather than complying with a restrictive new press policy, that independent journalists are essential for not only capturing what an administration says it’s going to do, but what it actually does.
