Shall We Dance?

"Trump's Ballroom" for the wealthy and well connected replaces the East Wing dedicated to the First Lady and public visitors. The message is hard to miss, but in return, I have a modest proposal.

The East Wing of the White House was built in 1942 to camouflage an underground bunker. But what started out as a ruse evolved into the center of the First Lady’s role and the place that coordinated and welcomed public visitors to the presidential residence.

It housed . . .

• The First Lady’s offices and staff

• The White House Social Office (which coordinates state dinners and official events)

• The White House Graphics and Calligraphy Office

• The White House Visitors Office

• Various correspondence offices

Whereas the rest of the White House, including the West Wing, is dedicated to housing the president and his family along with running the country and entertaining or confronting (whichever applies) dignitaries and big shots of all kinds, the East Wing was dedicated, at least in part, to the public at large.

What did Trump do to that wing?

And what is he going to replace it with?

Of course, Stephen Miller says the quiet part out loud.¹

Yeah, we wouldn’t want Bibi Netanyahu to get his kid leather shoes dirty or the Saudi prince to get mud on his dress, er, robe.

So we traded the area dedicated to the public at large (and the First Lady’s activities, which are generally domestically focused) for *checks notes* a ballroom to impress visiting dignitaries.

I have yet to see anyone in DC express the truth more brutally and pointedly, leaving little doubt about where the American population ranks in the concerns of the DC elite.

In America, we do indeed elect a king, in the modern parlance, a figurehead who performs for other figureheads and gives people someone to rally around while the real power lies somewhere far away from the accountability of the masses.

The only difference in America is that we trade kings around every four to eight years. Sometimes we elect one that wears a blue tie and sometimes we elect one that wears a red tie, but they’re all figureheads and they all are paid off by the same powers.

Which brings me to the next bit of honesty . . .

And that’s true, as far as I can tell. The ballroom is being built by “donors.”

Of course, one person’s “donor” is another person’s “briber.” Most presidents have the good sense to take their bribes after they leave office, in the form of Netflix deals and presidential libraries or gigantic foundations. But Trump is nearing 80 and he already has more money than he needs for himself and his family (unlike say Hunter Biden and his uncle, who had to use Joe to shake down people for their “inheritance”). Besides, his family is savvy enough to exploit Mr. Trump domestically, selling Trump Bibles and Trump crypto and Trump t-shirts and access to the great man himself, unlike Hunter, who had to go overseas.

I mean, can you imagine buying Grandpa Joe T-shirts, with ice cream spilled down the front? Though they could have put his face on a bunch of Depends. I think those would have sold like hotcakes.

So really what you’re seeing is a flicker of honesty, which is really what Trump is most useful for. The payoff for services rendered—a physical legacy—is right in plain sight.

As for legacies, assuming Trump doesn’t get us blown up by the Russians or start a new war in the Middle East with Iran, this is one of the more innocuous ones. Insulting yes, but as for its effect on Americans’ day-to-day lives, it doesn’t have much. It’s not like I was going to visit the White House anytime soon.

On the other hand, Obama’s legacy was the Un-Affordable Care Act, which just jumped my premiums about $300 a month and has made medical care a nightmare. Bush’s legacy was the War on Terror, resulting in an endless quagmire in the Middle East, and the Patriot Act, so war, bottomless debt, and constant spying.

A tacky Atlantic City ballroom seems to rather pale in comparison as it serves to eloquently remind the public that the idea that we the people own our government is a silly illusion.

Let’s clear up a few other things. Yes, the White House has been remodeled over the years, most famously by Harry Truman, who quite literally gutted the inside.

There was a reason, however.

President Harry Truman knew it was time to gut the White House when the leg of a black Baldwin grand piano broke through the floor of his daughter Margaret’s sitting room.

The president joked in a letter to his daughter that it would have surprised his wife’s gathering of the Daughters of the American Revolution if he had crashed through the ceiling in his marble bathtub.

“Would have gotten a headline to say the least don’t you think?” Truman wrote.

Truman quite literally gutted the place because it was quite literally falling apart.

But the alteration that really put bees in bonnets during the Truman remodel was the addition of a balcony, on the outside (take note).

The most controversial change was the addition of what became known as the Truman balcony to the second floor of the South Portico. Some architects said it clashed with the original Palladian style. Then-Rep. Frederick Muhlenberg, R-Pennsylvania, who himself worked in architecture, accused Truman of misappropriating the $16,000 for personal indulgence, according to the historical association.

William Hassett, a Truman secretary from 1945 to 1952, told an oral history that they chatted about the South Portico being out of balance with the rest of the building.

“The President had a good laugh at the mention of the ruckus he would create by tampering with the portico, and from the gleam in his eye I think he really wanted to have it moved,” Hassett said. “But that would be out-of-the-question, of course, as far as the public was concerned, so nothing came of it beyond the good laugh we had at the suggestion.”

Seems rather charming, all that fuss over a balcony when eighty years later a president would tear down a whole wing.

In the article linked to above, you can find a list of renovations and additions by presidents. You’ll notice that no part of the structure has been completely demolished to make way for a new structure, with one exception.

President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the removal in 1902 of the Victorian-era conservatories – glass structures used for growing plants – to the west of the main building.

In their place, he created the West Wing full of office space for the president and key staffers, as a separate area from the residence under architect Charles McKim’s design, according to the historical association.

Lawmakers scrutinized the $65,000 cost. The Washington Post said the removal of the greenhouses “destroyed its historic value and does not seem to have made it much more desirable as a residence.”

That’s as close as you come to what Trump has done: knocking down greenhouses to build the West Wing.

I’m not sure it really compares, in either scope or symbolism.

So what Trump has done is an outrage, especially as he began by promising the East Wing would not be affected.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said during an executive order signing in July. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

He lied. Are we surprised?

At this point, I’d be surprised if Trump actually told the truth.

But there are only a few of us that can be legitimately outraged. The rest are Lefties and Righties, which, well, . . .

I think that sums that up. By the way, both the people above are the “Losers” they refer to. In my world, it’s more important to “pick a lane” instead of “pick a team.” But I seem to be in the very small minority.

But this has given me an idea, a magnificent, brilliant idea, one that gives Trump a permanent legacy and solves a very real problem . . .

Okay, so our presidents are being “bought off”? Yes, all of them, in one way or another. To be fair, all our politicians are being bought off, but at the moment, let’s focus on the Sellout-in-Chief, rather than Senator Sellouts and Representative Sellouts or our various Sold-Out Regulatory Bodies.

Baby steps.

Trump has already waded into the land of the ridiculous and insulting but honest by replacing the part of the White House dedicated to the public with one dedicated to and paid for by the people who bought him off. I say since he’s already destroyed the East Wing and set a precedent, we just go with this.

In that vein, I propose the Transitory Reconstruction Upending Multiplying Payoffs, or T.R.U.M.P. Act.

In other words, we will make the taking of any money or other compensation after a president leaves office illegal. In fact, we will make the taking of any money or compensation during the president’s time illegal.

There will be no presidential libraries, no Netflix deals, no hawking merch, no foundations. In exchange, we will allow our successive presidents one edifice to temporarily commemorate their egos.

Each time a new president comes into office, we will, at taxpayer expense, tear down the East Wing turned Trump Ballroom turned whatever comes. The new president can then call upon his or her bribers to “donate” money to build whatever temporary structure he or she wants. Let’s say Gavin Newsom gets in. He can build a museum to hair care products and homeless camps. Bernie Sanders? A statue of Karl Marx versus Adam Smith in a fight to the death. Ted Cruz? An October 7th memorial loaded with Bible verses where the floor is covered in American flags as the Israeli flag is give pride of place on the wall. Elizabeth Warren? A teepee beside giant beer bottles. Pete Buttigieg? A faux train station with nursing rooms for men. Marco Rubio? A large movie theater where he can spend all day watching himself saving the world from Maduro or Hamas or a young version of Fidel Castro or foreign students on visas protesting the wrong thing.

And on the outside, we will put the donors’ names just so we’re clear on who owns that presidency.

Now we won’t completely deny the presidents monetary compensation once their term is over. On the day after the election that will see them removed from office (be it after one term or two), we will allow them to begin selling off parts of the “edifice to their ego,” at whatever price, right down to bags of concrete dust if they so choose. The only two stipulations are these: (1) Only people who qualify as the 99 percent can make a purchase, and (2) said president has to be down on the street personally making the exchange for money, so once every four to eight years, the hoi polloi will get the experience of haggling with our Sellout-in-Chief and symbolically buying a piece of him or her.

And the best thing about all this, we can put a capital gains exemption in the law for those who buy a chunk of the edifice to ego. Whenever said president kicks off, all those little pieces should increase in value. I’m not saying a lot, but enough for maybe a tidy little profit if the owners choose to sell them.

And in that way, the president can finally become personally useful to the citizenry, giving back a little of what he or she has taken.

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If you enjoyed today’s piece, please . . .

I am horrid at self-promotion and find my sanity degrading if I have to spend too much time in the online world talking about the same things over and over, and I hope that good work speaks for itself. (If you consider this lousy work, then please do me a solid and let that be our secret.)

1. This is actually a summation, but it’s a good summation.