The premise is that he will do this before he leaves office, however that happens. Multiple selections allowed. Agree, disagree, dispute, quibble, object, or discuss however you want.
YES. trump will bulldoze the W.H. down to the ground and leave only rubble, the way the East Wing looks now
SORT OF. trump will destroy most of the main W.H. and leave only parts, like the Truman Balcony and The Presidential Walk of Fame
NOT EXACTLY. trump will tinker with specific things like the columns, entrances, walkways, adding gold doo-dads everywhere so the result will be a tacky, unsightly mess, but the main W.H. building itself will remain standing
WILD CARD. trump will rebuild the East Wing, add the Ballroom, all in exquisite taste and the W.H. and grounds will look fabulous by the time he leaves office
WEIRD. trump will turn the lawns into a golf course and name it after himself
Trump has already desecrated put his stamp on the Walk of Fame, so that will probably stay. Likewise the balcony, which is a perfect place for the ruptured duck emblem referenced elsewhere. Anything else is fair game.
I hope he does bulldoze it, people need to understand that there is no America left. If you’re still socializing with Trumpists, you share their guilt.
My “something I can’t even imagine” is this: He bulldozes the grounds, and then finds a way to rebuild it with slave labor, just like the original White House was so many decades ago.
I voted for NOT EXACTLY, but I could see him hiding behind the new reinforced front door when he loses the election, and many parts of the WH getting destroyed in the fight to extricate him.
There’s no poll option for “No, of course not,” which is the correct answer. This will not happen. A man obsessed with building an eternal legacy isn’t going to destroy the single most important part of it.
Trump, like Ozymandias, is convinced that all his tacky alterations to the grounds - the ballroom, the helipad, the paved-over Rose Garden, the “walk of fame” with a picture of an autopen, the gold leaf, the big labels to remind him which room he’s in - are going to stand for centuries to come and future presidents will look on them with admiration and awe, as is his due as the greatest president who will ever live.
I’m told that restoring the Rose Garden* would take years, possibly decades after Trump’s Folly is removed, due to the land being compacted by building machinery (and the removal of the frivolous addition’s machinery), and contaminated by alkaline lime leaching from the concrete.
It is not quite a FEMA site (yet), though Trump’s ambitions do tend towards the “grand gesture”… and the supposed early reasoning for the stupid idea was that it would include a super-sekrit nukular bomb-proof underground lair in which for Goldmember to lurk.
* regrowing the original roses would be impossible, but if… and that “if” could be all-caps, in giant-point Grotesque typeface (one Trump would not like, due to the lack of serifs)… if some White House gardener had taken some clippings, it could be restored.
Can’t they just get a buttload of dirt and pour it on top of the concrete? So the garden will be raised a few feet - just build a retaining wall and some stairs.
Kinda like what he’s figuratively done with the Office of the President itself, which can never again have the prestige it once had. I’m old enough remember the days of JFK – the days of Camelot, where the office was both the pinnacle of political power and also a form of de facto royalty in which the nation took pride. Today it’s a symbol of disgrace, corruption, and the stupidity of the American voter.
If they’re going to do that, there’s no reason not to remove the concrete first. Also, roses have long taproot systems and need about as much soil depth underground as they have foiliage height above ground. A six- to eight-foot raised bed in the White House grounds would look kind of weird.
I say if they’re going to fix it at all, might as well fix it right, even if it will take time for the soil to recover.