Chapter 1: What is the controversy surrounding President Trump's new ballroom?
The latest thing dividing Americans is President Trump's 300 million or so dollar ballroom.
Nobody's actually seen anything quite like it. I think it'll be one of the great ballrooms anywhere in the world.
53% of Americans polled disapprove, a quarter say go for it, and a quarter aren't sure. So he's not using any taxpayer money, but the donated funds are coming from unsettling corporations like Palantir and unsettling individuals like the Winklevii. He tore down the entire East Wing, but the White House was having parties in tents on the lawn for lack of a real ballroom. It's ugly.
That's subjective. It's the people's house. And the people voted for Donald Trump. Today on Today Explained, Demolition Man.
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I mean, I see this. I like it. It's so incredible.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Boom. Okay. Pshew. Boom.
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Chapter 2: How did the demolition of the East Wing affect the White House?
There was a movie theater that the president would sometimes screen special films in. So it was not as glamorous as the West Wing, but it was an important part of the White House, and it had been part of the White House for decades. So the fact that it is now rubble is a very big change.
It sounds like maybe some of the softer aspects of White House life were the East Wing's responsibility.
That's right. And sometimes to the detriment of staff who ended up in the East Wing, I was talking to Tevi Troy, a historian about this over the weekend, who made the point that I think it was during the Kennedy administration, there was a fight between some Kennedy staffers, and they were mocking the East Wing folks as they were only in the East Wing.
That was the more feminine side of the White House with Jackie Kennedy. So it was a little bit of machismo and not as prestigious as being in the West Wing. But again, it's still the White House, and it was a major part of the White House these past years.
All right. So we will have a new East Wing. What's it going to look like? What are the plans here?
Well, I wish I could tell you, Noelle. I think at this point, as we're talking, Monday, October 27th, we still have not seen formal plans. We've seen some renderings that President Trump has shared and the White House put out on a website. But we don't know exactly what the East Wing is going to look like. For the past week, we've been asking, will it be rebuilt? What will it contain?
What will this ballroom that the president wants actually look like in practice? And there are still no formal plans, which is very unusual, if not unprecedented for a major White House plan like this to go ahead with demolishing part of the building without letting us know what's going to replace it.
Can you tell me a little bit about the renderings? Like, what do we know?
So President Trump has spoken all year about his desire for a ballroom at the White House.
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Chapter 3: What historical significance did the East Wing hold before its demolition?
I mean, there's so much gold in there now. It's significantly different. These are all things that President Trump would have done at one of his own resorts and ballrooms and the Rose Garden Club, which is his name for the newly paved over Rose Garden. I mean, that's what you would expect at a Trump resort. So that all kind of is of a piece.
I think more broadly, Trump has bulldozed the federal government in many ways. And that's probably why this story took off so much. It was a metaphor for so many things that President Trump has tried to do, where he goes ahead and makes his changes and consequences be damned. And lots of Americans are understandably confused or even upset to see part of the White House come down so quickly.
Dan Diamond of The Washington Post. He covers the White House. Coming up, our ballrooms, ourselves. What the president's plans tell us about us.
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It's Today Explained. You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back. Oh.
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Chapter 4: What are the plans for the new East Wing and ballroom?
Thomas Jefferson expanded the grounds. He created gardens that reflected his ideals. Franklin Roosevelt relocated the Oval Office to the southeast corner of the West Wing. But at the time, the existing office was rather dark, rather cramped. And so he brought a lot of light and accessibility to the office. Harry Truman oversaw the reconstruction of the interior.
When President Harry S. Truman and Mrs. Truman came to live in the White House, it had seen almost a century and a half of hard use.
But a lot of that was because of what seemed to be imminent collapse of parts of the building that were so unsafe that there was really no other recourse but to do that.
I have a committee which has museum experts and government people and private citizens on it. and then everything we do is subject to approval by the Fine Arts Committee.
Her restoration project in general emphasized historical continuity. She also obviously created the Rose Garden. She did a lot to the grounds, all of which have been demolished. So this is not the first destruction of pieces of the White House that Trump wants to remake as his own for primarily...
celebratory or party reasons as opposed to reasons that reflect more safety or preservation or augmentation for the people as opposed to billionaire donors. All right. So other presidents have changed the White House, but you're saying this sort of belies comparison. If there's no real comparison in the U.S., are there comparisons elsewhere, other world leaders who have done this sort of thing?
Oh, my gosh, yes. Oh. Louis XIV's vision for the design of Versailles transformed what was a royal residence into a stage on which his reign would be essentially performed. And Benito Mussolini's marble piazzas sought to tie fascism to Rome's magnificence.
From high balcony, Italy's idol looks down on his admirers, and the smile on his face is the smile of a man who is sure.
In the process, entire neighborhoods were demolished to create the boulevards of the Imperiali. In Versailles, in fascist Rome, architecture was created to extend the power of a leader by rewriting the meaning of the nation's most visible symbols. And essentially, that is what Trump is doing here. It's not a practical addition. It's a metaphor for the Trump brand overtaking the institution.
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