Welcome Back to Gotham City: A Monument to a Despot

Under ordinary circumstances, in ordinary times, an autocrat deciding to tear down a major portion of the White House would looked upon with outrage, skepticism and maybe even legal action. We're living at a time in history when the White House is literally destroying itself. But these days, it's just another day at MiniTru.

The idea of the White House, or the fat autocrat squatting in the West Wing, tearing itself down is perfectly symbolic of an administration that's made a mockery of the office of the presidency going back to when Trump rode down that escalator in 2015. The ballroom is also perfectly symbolic of the cartoonishly gaudy corruption that's surrounded this once-sacred building.

The White House was originally commissioned by President George Washington in 1792 and not finished until the final year of President John Adams' term. Back then, there was no East or West Wings but President Thomas Jefferson ordered the construction of an East Terrace that was destroyed by President Andrew Johnson in 1866. It was rebuilt in 1902 by President Teddy Roosevelt and construction for the East Wing began in 1942 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

What the latter Roosevelt did was not merely an aesthetic but a strategic move- Beneath the new East Wing was the bunker that would house the president and key aides in the event of an emergency. Republicans howled about it back then because, you know, Democrat.

It was during the Roosevelt years that the East Wing became the work space of the First Lady. It also was the venue for the Presidential Theater and was the largest White House area for state dinners and receptions.

Now it's a pile of rubble.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone when Trump, the guy who told over 30,000 lies during his first term, (and Karoline Leavitt) said earlier this year that the White House wouldn't be touched for the ballroom. In fact, he even said he was "its biggest fan." Then the bulldozers came in. Treasury Department officials next door were ordered not to show pictures of the destruction of the East Wing on social media.

In 2010, Trump called David Axelrod, then a high-ranking official in the new Obama administration, and suggested building a ballroom. Axelrod later recalled Trump told him, "You know, you have these state dinners and you have them in these little tents. You know, I build ballrooms. I build the greatest ballrooms and you can come down to Florida to see them."

The Obama administration politely told him to go fuck himself.

No doubt, that rejection rankled under his flabby orange skin and, until this month, Trump has been quietly obsessed with building a ballroom at the White House, obviously as a way of sticking his greasy thumb in Obama's eye. So, while what Trump is doing to the East Wing is a desecration, it really shouldn't shock anyone that this is being done in service to the vanity of the guy who destroyed the Rose Garden not once but twice and turned it into a concrete, Mar a Lago-style patio.

One awaits the day when Trump orders Jefferson's cherry trees to be uprooted and replaced with palm trees.

So, since he's easily broken his promise not to touch the White House, what assurance do we have that none of this will be footed by the taxpayers or that Trump will invest even a nickel of his ill-gotten money to pay for it? And even if it is truly underwritten by "donors", one has to ask what do they expect in return? Either way, the optics are horrible.

And, perhaps without knowing it, or maybe by design, Trump seems to be staggering in the footsteps of another autocrat who'd done something remarkably similar. The only difference is, Trump thinks bigger than Hitler.

So, how is he able to get away with this, one may ask? Well, the King of the Loopholes found one: According to the Military Times, The White House (along with the Supreme Court building, the Capitol and all their “related buildings and grounds”) are exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The White House has its own committee: The Committee for the Preservation of the White House. But that's chaired by the Director of the US Park Service and all committee members have been appointed by Trump. Obviously, they rubber-stamped this desecration.

But, while Trump's ultimate motivation for building this ballroom is frightening enough, it's the sheer size and scale of it that takes one's breath away. At a proposed 90,000 square feet, it will dwarf the White House, which was, until this month, 55,000 square feet.

Now, he's openly floating the idea of naming the ballroom, surprise, surprise, after himself. The East Wing's rubble hasn't even been carted off, yet, and we're already hearing about cost overruns. First it was $200,000,000, then days later it expanded to $250,000,000, then it was $300,000,000, now Trump's preparing us for $350,000,000. Since this monstrosity won't be finished until the end of Trump's term, any fool can see it will wind up costing over a billion. If it's funded by "donors", then how much did they give him? And for what in exchange?

Some wags have called it the Epstein Ballroom but that won't even slow down construction. Republicans, unlike the gadflies in FDR's administration, aren't saying a word, even as the government is in the fourth week of the second-longest shutdown in US history. And, really, how can anyone expect the GOP to finally find their spine to confront the most garishly, comically corrupt administration in US history?