Search

Politics

Trump’s $300M ‘Ballroom Dream’ Turns East Wing Into a War Zone - Shocking New Photos Reveal the Ruins

By Shrobana Rakshit
Donald Trump has turned the White House's historic East Wing into a mangled dump of metal and rubble, which has turned the legendary piece of architecture into a war zone. New photos from the scene reveal the violent ferocity with which Trump has demolished the once-legendary building." The president is focused on the missed opportunity to turn the space into his gigantic $300 million ballroom. The East Wing looks nothing like before, and all the old pieces have been broken down. Even though Trump insisted that the ballroom would be near the East Wing, and he wouldn't be touching it. He had confirmed that the "construction would not interfere with the current building,” and he would “not touch it.” On Monday, photographer Anna Moneymaker captured an excavator that was clearing gnarled steel skeletons from the East Wing. The building, originally constructed in 1902, housed the Office of the First Lady — which, ironically, hasn’t seen Melania Trump’s footsteps in quite some time. Trump is now trucking all the dirt from the construction to create mounds at a public Washington D.C. golf course. An insider close to the matter shared with the Washington Post that some of the dirt from White House will be used for the mounds, and the rest will be used elsewhere. Trump's eradication of the East Wing, which is even visible from space, is not enough for me. Apart from the First Lady's office, he has erased the East Colonnade, the Family Theater, as well as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. Everyone is expressing horror at the teardown, including preservationists, archeologists, and democrats, who used to be around the East Wing's halls. “This is just an example of the executive plowing ahead with a project that we all found out about right at the last minute. And then it was gone,” Jason Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. The former Georgia state senator said the demolition “would be heartbreaking” for his grandmother Rosalynn Carter, “because she always believed this was the people’s house.” Pete Souza, former Chief Official White House Photographer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, agreed with Carter's sentiments, “You don‘t just tear down a building. This is not his house. This house belongs to us. It‘s the people’s house, and one man should not be able to just knock down a building for his vanity ballroom project,” Souza told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. However, Donald Trump has dismissed the trolling, calling the sound of the East Wing's demolition “music to my ears,” and saying, “It was never thought of as being much. It was a very small building.” In the place of the iconic East Wing building, the 79-year-old former real estate developer is building a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. But the construction of the ballroom will finish off the White House’s iconic Executive Residence. He insists his project would be paid for “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.” The plans for the new ballroom that Trump has shared include innumerable architectural features. The plans also include a staircase from the South Lawn that leads directly into a brick wall, along with two woefully misaligned windows that appear to open onto each other. As well as two woefully misaligned windows appear to open out onto one another

Latest from Inquisitr

Front page