The People house is the The Peoples house.
I care. But it is far down on my list of worries about this term of office.
I think Mrs Lincoln and Jackie both thought it a dump as well. I remember Nancy Reagan having rude things to say about it.
Most President’s just think if it as an office and a place to crash.
This is all Trumps big fantasy of living larger than anyone else.
Seriously, all that fake gold trim in the Oval makes me wanna puke.
The symbolism and lack of process make it important. The White House is the icon of US power. When Trump destroys it on nothing more than a whim, it shows how successful he has become at tearing down our form of government.
Of course the fault is Congress. Congressional slight of hand gave him the SCOTUS, and total lack of oversight is allowing Trump the child to run amuck. List Trumps flagrant violations then ask yourself how could Congress let this happen. What’s in it for them? Surely those folks are not stupid, so WTF are they doing? Trump managing the strings of power from Mar-A-Lago is a ghastly thought.
I guess now we know what he was doing on the roof on august the 5th:
Plan the demolition. He felt so mighty, it was great.
President Donald Trump, center, with architect James McCrery, left, surveys the grounds from the roof above the Colonnade that goes to the West Wing of the White House, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025, in Washington.
Now tell me who the other people in that photo are. Ask them what was that about, what he was phantasizing about. Nice touch btw:
President Donald Trump, center, with…
Yeah, we would not have known otherwise who that was.
Then who is this James McCrery?
How many architects does it take to wreck the White House?
How did he get his big carcass up there? I don’t think an elevator or escalator would be going up there.
I get a giggle thinking of him climbing a rickety ladder with one of his toadies spotting him and praying he don’t fall down.
You are a good person. I believe they were praying for him to fall down. The prayers did not work. Spoiler: they never do for good deeds. Only for evil ones.
Well, I figured the toadie was more worried about himself getting squashed in the process.
(I can be treacherous 
)
Video of the comparison sizes of presidential residences
“Bolsonaro’s is bigger than mine!”
From what I’ve read, when Trump and the architect were on the roof on August 5, they were above the Press Briefing Room, which is in the one-story West Wing. You can walk out to that roof from the second story.
So really, no athletics involved.
I saw something this morning in the news that Trump is asserting himself more and more into the day-to-day work and design of the project. There’s nothing a contractor loves more than to have some amateur on the site with the power to make on-the-spot change orders. Apparently, this contractor is unhappy with this turn of events, and I’d be willing to bet that he hasn’t seen a nickel in his own pocket.
The article from the New York Times in the OP says, “The president has also said that the firm excavating the site initially told him the work would cost $3.2 million, but that he pressured the company to accept just $2 million.”
He could be a hero…
Yep. I was nice and I swear my contractor had a hit out on me.
Karen-Trump might have caused him to murder without compunction, on the spot.
Some of that does serve a purpose, though: It (usually) gets it through to the person that they now have a really important job, and that they can really screw up the country if they don’t do it well. I recall a military officer, who said he had a bit of a revelation once, as a new junior officer, that the men under his command would literally do whatever he told them to do - even if it was a really bad idea. It made him stop and think about what words actually came out of his mouth.
Of course, this fails with someone like Trump, who sees only the pomp and circumstances, and feels that it is nothing more than his due. It would never occur to him that there was some obligation going the other way. And that’s why the ballroom is a problem - it’s all bling for the narcissist, nothing more.
Maybe you need a new Inauguration Day tradition, post-Trump. Every new President has to go into the ballroom, and smash the shit out of some part of it with a sledge hammer. Remind them that it’s not all about them and the bling. This boondoggle is going to be so large, you could probably do that for a century before you ran out of things to smash.
Or do as the Romans did at a triumph:
In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to “look behind”.[11] A version of this warning is often rendered into English as “Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal”, for example in Fahrenheit 451 .[12]
Looking back on the sequence of events, in July there was talk of a large building using the Winter Palace as an example
My take on the present status of that building is that after Trump collected a few bucks and approached a contractor to start construction, the response was “not possible until the approvals are complete and the permits are in place”. Apparently destruction of the East Wing had been planned for some time, because the place was recorded in detail and the artifacts removed. That was done between July and October. So. the planned destruction of the East Wing is just ruse to make it look like there is work progressing on the Ball Room. I believe that is as far as the Ball Room project will ever get.
However, Trump now knows he can demolish the White House on his own. Great distraction when needed.
Every time I hear “Trump ball room” I picture this:
