Listen To This Story

I had made a resolution to stop writing about each new abominable thing Donald Trump does. I mean, it had long since passed beyond dispute or even question that there would be no redemption, no course correction, not even a slowing down in his swaggering rampage through democracy, the rule of law, and pretty much everything else we hold dear. 

In fact, the pace of putrid has been picking up. Centrist Damon Linker recently compared the job of Trump critics and commentators to hitting baseballs in a batting cage where “the pitching machine isn’t functioning correctly,” so that “the balls come in rapid and irregular succession” and you, the batter, wind up “looking like a maniac, swinging wildly and erratically in a desperate attempt to keep up and stay on top of the action.”

The media is well stocked with flailing batters, so what would be the point of yet another critic going up against that ’roided-out, punch-drunk Iron Mike? How much louder, after all, can the stuck pig that is our national conscience squeal? And what difference would it make? 

There is, in my view, one story now: What measures will Trump and his MAGA machine take to cement themselves in power by — in one way or another — nullifying the power of the people to remove them through the electoral process?

That will be the story for the next year, with just about everything else — no matter how outrageous — of significance only to the extent that it bears on this crucial component of Trump’s power game. 

There is, in my view, one story now: What measures will Trump and his MAGA machine take to cement themselves in power by — in one way or another — nullifying the power of the people to remove them through the electoral process?

It is, I suppose, technically possible that Congress or the Supreme Court will attempt to assemble a few fractured vertebrae in the direction of a spine. But if that ever happens, it will be news indeed and I promise to help convey it. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been observing a self-imposed moratorium on “Trump said this” and “Trump did that” stuff, trying to stick faithfully to the other horrible stuff to be found in the horrible newsfeed of the Trumpocene.

But His Bulldozers

I was doing OK with my resolution until last Wednesday, when news broke that Trump intended to complete the demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House by the weekend. Not the facade, not a portico or a few pillars — the whole damn thing. 

And guess what? Done. Thursday. Several days ahead of “schedule.”

Extreme Home Makeover: “Dictator’s Chic.”

— 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 (@sundaedivine.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T11:09:41.955Z

Why has this development kick-started me back into writing about Trump doing abominable things? Not because of any particular attachment to the building itself, nor because of pearl- clutching about renovation per se. Other White House occupants have renovated, albeit at a smaller scale and far less destructively. And, as subway tokens, wooden tennis rackets, and rotary phones might remind us, change, for better or worse, is inevitable.

In the grand scheme of things, Trump himself has done deeds far more abominable than anything one can do to marble and wood and plaster, even venerated marble and wood and plaster. 

He’s badly hurt living things, including humans he considers as subhuman or vermin. 

He’s sexually assaulted women, stiffed workers, separated families, blown up alleged drug traffickers without offering a shred of evidence to support his allegations, and sicced his violent ICE goons on legal immigrants and protesters. 

He threatens to deploy the full, deadly force of the military against US citizens on American soil. 

His cynical politicization of the US’s COVID-19 response cost several hundred thousand lives. 

And through his wanton gutting of USAID and other critical support programs, domestic and foreign, he will be responsible for the deaths, potentially, of millions.

Taken in that context, Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make room for his now-$350 million ballroom — which, at a planned 90,000 square feet, is the footage of two full football fields — might be written off as a veritable peccadillo.

In the grand scheme of things, Trump himself has done deeds far more abominable than anything one can do to marble and wood and plaster, even venerated marble and wood and plaster. 

What stands out to me as being of far greater import than the dirty deed itself is the dirty trick Trump pulled to get his way.

You see, he told a little fib back on July 31, when, in announcing the construction of the ballroom, he said the White House would remain intact, specifically:

It [the ballroom] won’t interfere with the current building. It will be near it but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.

Surprise, a Trumpian lie! Or perhaps he just has his own unorthodox ideas about “touching” and “total respect.” 

A Stunt Worthy of a Dirty Developer — His Dad

They say you should take Trump seriously but not literally. But what interests me is not the fact that Mr. Seriously-But-Not-Literally lied — it is, frankly, more newsworthy when he doesn’t — but why he lied.

To figure that out — it’s not hard — all we have to do is imagine that on July 31, 2025, Trump had told the truth.

Back then or at any time since — even as recently as last Sunday, when some have speculated he impulsively decided to go whole hog as a kind of post–No Kings tantrum companion piece to his shit-dumping video — if Trump had said that the East Wing would be disfigured, let alone demolished, oh how the lawsuits, TROs, and injunctions would have sprung up and dogged him. Even Congress might have risen from its dusty knees in formal inquiry. 

In short, he would have faced major impediments to his plan, extending perhaps even to hard questions about cost of and payment for the Great Big Ballroom — which it was reported, though of course denied by Trump, he is planning to name after himself — and its obvious invitation to yet more pay-to-play corruption, as corporations and moguls line up to fund it.

All those hoops: permits, historical preservation analyses, environmental impact statements… Oy, a real pain in the ass! 

Back in NYC, when young Donald was getting his education in because fuck you-ing the world, Fred Trump Sr. had a solution: Bulldoze first, argue later. 

A classic dirty developer’s move, anticipatory demolition — aka “stake-driving” — makes all that nasty legal stuff go away. 

You might get sued by whoever owned or loved what you destroyed; you might even lose in court or have to settle. In either case, peanuts! By that time, your high-rise will be ready for occupancy and the rents will have started rolling in (in the case of the President Donald J. Trump Ballroom, one can just imagine the “rents” — start with an exclusive soiree for high rollers at a million dollars a head with a capacity of a thousand; you do the math!).

Stake-driving may work in Queens or Brooklyn, but it’s not a move you’d expect a president to pull with The White House. Then again, this is Donald Trump, so hey, why not?

Cue the ‘Jaws’ Music

There has been resounding outcry about the act itself, tempered by the occasional caution that the hand-wringing might be overblown and backfire, and that, even in the past week, Trump has committed worse deeds that deserve more attention. 

Linker, for example, cited Trump’s shakedown of his own Department of Justice for $230 million for having had the nerve to prosecute him for inciting an insurrection and making off with troves of classified documents, as well as his deputization of everyone from Kash Patel to Tulsi Gabbard to “never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again,” as both more outrageous and more ominous than Trump’s East Wing pulverization.

Trump: "We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again. We just can't let that happen. I know Kash is working on it, everybody is working on it. And certainly Tulsi is working on it. We can't let that happen again to our country." pic.twitter.com/xEjUjELz0p

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2025

I don’t entirely disagree with Linker. He correctly reads Trump’s stated plan to “Stop the Steal” in advance as “a declaration that a Democrat must never again be allowed to win the presidency — and that the FBI Director, the Director of National Intelligence, and ‘everybody’ in the Trump administration has been assigned the task of figuring out how to ensure that becomes a reality.” 

And it does not get any more ominous than that — especially if one remembers that the 2020 election was not stolen and that it was Trump who attempted to steal it — violently.

Couple that with Steve Bannon’s assurance last week that Trump will serve a third term and that “there is a plan” to make sure that happens, and you can begin to see why Trump is behaving as if he were the sole owner of the White House in fee simple absolute. It’s his to sell, or bulldoze, and he has no plans to leave.

But — and here is the gossamer thread that connects the fate of the East Wing with the fate of our republic — before Trump makes it to the next presidential election in 2028, he has to clear the bar of the midterms next November. If either the House or Senate flips, he will face fierce blowback from Democrats who finally seem to have grasped just who and what they are dealing with.

That is why Trump has been insistent that red states ultra-gerrymander to “find” him more seats in the House. 

It is why Trump’s DOJ is going to the mat to access voter information from the states and drive sweeping purges of groups of voters likely to vote Democrat. 

It is why the gears are turning to federalize critical aspects of election administration, beginning with what amounts to a trial run this November. 

And it is a major reason ICE, National Guard troops, and other forces under Trump’s control are being sent into American cities, where tens of millions of Democratic voters can be targeted for intimidation and suppression. 

All it will take for Trump to corrupt, cancel, or nullify the midterms is a little “emergency” — which he has already ginned up to justify everything from his tariff powers to mass arrests and troop deployments.

That’s the grand plan to effectively rig American elections, and it’s not getting anywhere near enough coverage in the press — though it will get plenty here at WhoWhatWhy, including all the guidance that can be mustered on how to counter it. 

Related: Trump Is Laying the Groundwork for Stealing the Midterms

But Trump learned a sharp lesson in the aftermath of the 2020 election, one that has been reinforced this year: Courtrooms are not MAGA rallies. 

Given fair notice, litigants have come out of the woodwork — nasty pests defending democracy, whether by opposing Trump’s baseless challenges of his defeat in 2020 or by challenging his implementation of Project 2025 and other dubious or patently illegal arrogations of power these past 10 months.

And judges across the country, despite the spankings administered by Trump’s rogue Supreme Court, have been listening to the cases presented, weighing the evidence, and doing their work. The vast majority of lower court decisions have gone against the president and have, to a significant degree, kept his rampage in check.

Such might well have been the case with the Trump Ballroom and the East Wing if fair notice had been given. Trump’s bulldozer blitzkrieg demonstrates, ominously, that he now knows better than to give fair notice — in fact, to give any notice.

The rubble that was the East Wing is, in itself, a terrible symbol of autocracy. It remains to be seen whether it will be any kind of political turning point, or even register as a blip in the polls. 

But I see that rubble as something more, and worse: a mode of action and a likely harbinger of actions to come.

Those who are counting on the midterm election to stop Trump, those who are counting on it to be free and fair, would do well to gaze at the rubble that a week ago was the East Wing. 

By giving false assurances and then just doing it, Trump beat any potential opposition to the punch. 

Now apply that lesson and those tactics to, say, the 2026 election.

Those who are counting on that election to stop Trump, those who are counting on it to be free and fair, would do well to gaze at the rubble that a week ago was the East Wing. 

The East Wing of the People’s House was made of marble and wood and plaster. Elections are made of rules, rights, procedures, protections, data, computer code, and a firm commitment among the vast majority of their human administrators to honesty and fairness. 

When elections are corrupted — when modern democracies fail and become dictatorships — the rubble is harder to see. And much harder to rebuild. 

Trump’s lesson was to ambush — to literally and figuratively drive the stake. 

Our lesson is to fortify — to guard our democracy’s heart, beginning yesterday.