Tours of the White House are out of the question, not least because the visitor entrance, which happened to be in the East Wing, is now a closed-off rubble-strewn demolition site, where Trump\u2019s vision for a grand golden 8,361 sq m ballroom will soon take shape.<\/p>\n
Groups of school students and couples on holiday still gazed through the railings this week at the US National Historic Landmark that has served as the president\u2019s residence since 1800.<\/p>\n
But the view of the East Wing, expanded in 1942, is blocked by high barricades. Only the tops of two giant extractors peek above the fencing in clouds of dust and din, horrifying preservationists, Democratic lawmakers and at least a few American tourists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis country is full of homeless people with nothing to eat, and this moron is spending this kind of money on this?\u201d said Jonathan Fineberg (79) who was visiting on Thursday from Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
His wife, Marianne Malone Fineberg, was not reassured by Trump\u2019s renovation work from earlier this year, when he had the White House\u2019s Rose Garden lawn paved over and dotted with yellow patio umbrellas. \u201cNow it looks like an overpriced hotel somewhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Some tourists lofted iPhones high above their heads, trying fruitlessly for a clear shot of whatever had just happened to what was the East Wing, which had traditionally housed the offices and staff of the president\u2019s spouse.<\/p>\n
Trump, a Republican who likes to cite his architectural acumen acquired as a former real-estate mogul in New York City, says they aren\u2019t missing much and no one should mourn its demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very small building,\u201d Trump told reporters this week, already using the past tense after his earlier pledge that his changes to the existing White House complex would not be so drastic. \u201cThere was a storey added on, which was not particularly nice.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some conservatives have defended Trump and his efforts to modernise what they say is an old and perennially too-small building. Victoria Coates, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation think-tank, wrote in a social media post that the ballroom \u201cwill be a great addition to the White House, not some egregious aesthetic affront”.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers have said Trump\u2019s changes have not gone through the proper channels and criticised the funding. The price tag, now some $300 million (\u20ac258m), is being covered by private donors, including some US technology companies such as Google and an unspecified fraction by Trump himself.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s staff say the president does not need permission for the demolition and that the construction plans would soon be sent on to the National Capital Planning Commission, an agency currently chaired by Trump\u2019s White House staff secretary.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was dishonest about his intent in terms of \u2018we\u2019re not going to touch anything, like it\u2019s going to be close, but not touching\u2019,\u201d said Kevin Wade, a 52-year-old tech worker visiting the capital from Texas. \u201cAnd then now we\u2019re completely demolishing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addison Nguyen, a 32-year-old pharmaceutical company employee, made his appraisal as he showed visiting relatives around Washington ahead of his weekend wedding.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ultimately a vanity project for Trump,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seems like there\u2019s no real checks and balances to what sort of decisions he can make.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ballroom, sad to say, it\u2019s one of the least things that I\u2019m worried about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tours of the White House are out of the question, not least because the visitor entrance, which happened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-145332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115437365178411251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}