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.
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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.
While presidents have done a lot of tinkering with the White House over the years—from a complete remodel from Truman, to Ford’s swimming pool, to Carter’s solar panels on the roof, to Obama’s basketball court—making unilateral changes to federal buildings is almost certainly illegal. The National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation are supposed to sign off on any alterations to the White House; this can’t happen because the government is shut down.
Trump also has no budget for this, as would also be legally required. Instead, he is funding it with a ton of corporate bribes. Representatives from Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, HP, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir, T-Mobile, Ripple, the New York Jets (!), and numerous other companies and wealthy individuals—most of whom have routine business before the government—recently attended a $250 million fundraiser for the ballroom’s construction. Almost a tenth of the money comes from Google alone, which paid $24.5 million, $22 million of it earmarked for the ballroom, to settle a completely preposterous lawsuit against YouTube for banning Trump’s account after he tried to overthrow the government. (In other words, a bribe to Trump after he faced accountability for trying to destroy one federal building—the Capitol—is being funneled to his destruction of another.)
All this makes clear the stakes of what is happening—something that is badly needed. I think a critical mass of Americans, particularly more well-to-do ones, have been so indoctrinated with American exceptionalism that they simply can’t believe what is happening to them and their country. This is the “world’s oldest democracy,” the “shining city on a hill,” the “best country on Earth,” and so on; the idea that a crummy low-rent charlatan like Trump could tear our vaunted institutions to ribbons in a matter of months is incomprehensible. But when you see the actual ribbons, splayed about in a demolition site on the White House lawn, you can’t ignore it.
Trump greatly benefits from the feeling of stunned disbelief. It turns out the inflated self-regard embodied in American exceptionalism actually makes the country more vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover. In South Korea—which has experience of dictatorship within living memory—when the president attempted a similar authoritarian power grab, elderly members of parliament were livestreaming themselves vaulting fences so they could assemble and vote him down.
There’s a reason they did that. Just consider a selection of other headlines: Here’s Trump apparently blowing up random fishermen in the Caribbean; here’s him declaring he might order the Justice Department to give him $230 million; here’s him pardoning George Santos for identity theft and fraud; here’s him pardoning Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (who pled guilty to violating money-laundering laws) after his company funneled millions in crypto to Trump. It’s worth almost any effort to stop this grotesque misrule—or put another way: Freedom is worth fighting for.
It is not too late to stop Trump’s attempt to consolidate a dictatorship. In many ways, he is going about it in an extremely stupid fashion—normally, for instance, you build your disgusting, massive golden monument to your megalomania after your unshakable power is secured—but action must be taken. The sooner Americans realize they are just ordinary people like any other, and not only can it “happen here,” it is happening, right now, the better.