The East Wing of the White House started coming down on Monday as construction began on President Donald Trump’s new 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The project will nearly double the size of the White House and completely change how it looks.Trump has already made big changes to other parts of Washington, and now he’s changing how the city looks, too.Bulldozers move in at the White House, tearing through the East Wing to clear ground for President Trump’s massive 90,000-square-foot ballroom.The East Wing was one of the few parts of the White House that hadn’t been renovated yet. The Oval Office and the Cabinet Room are covered in gold decorations. The Rose Garden looks like his Mar-a-Lago resort. There are tall flagpoles in the front and back yards. He’s been making changes to the living quarters upstairs and overseeing renovations at the Kennedy Center. He even wants to build an Arc de Triomphe-style arch across the Potomac River.By the end of his term, no one knows exactly what Washington will look like — but there will definitely be more to see.By Monday afternoon, reporters near the Treasury Department could already see the work beginning. A large excavator was tearing down the East Wing’s walls while workers cleared away piles of glass, bricks, and wires.Meanwhile, on the other side of the White House, Trump was meeting with a college baseball championship team.“You know, we’re building right behind us, we’re building a ballroom,” he told them.“Right on the other side, you have a lot of construction going on,” he said, “which you might hear periodically.”“It just started today,” he added.The demolition made it clear how big this project will be. It’s one of the largest White House renovations in decades — not since President Harry S. Truman built the West Wing there has been such a large construction effort.Trump said in July that the $200 million ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,” though that always seemed unlikely given the project’s size. On Monday, he said it would hold “999” people.Last week, Trump hosted a dinner with corporate executives who agreed to help pay for the ballroom. Ethics experts say this raises concerns that rich donors could use it as a way to gain access to the president. People also wonder what the ballroom might be used for, since Trump — a self-described crypto billionaire — has hosted parties with wealthy memecoin investors.“For more than 150 years, every President has dreamed about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc.,” Trump wrote on social media Monday.He added that “the East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete!”The Washington Post first reported the news of the demolition.Traditionally, the East Wing has been the area used by the First Lady and her staff. Earlier this month, some of Melania Trump’s staff began packing up their things and moving elsewhere in the White House complex to prepare for the work.Trump’s love of demolishing old buildings goes back decades. He started his career as a real estate developer who often tore down older structures to build something new.In 1980, he demolished the old Bonwit Teller building in Manhattan to make way for Trump Tower. He had promised to save the limestone sculptures on the building, but they were destroyed instead — angering many in New York.When journalist Marie Brenner asked him if destroying the sculptures had hurt his reputation, he replied:“Who cares? Let’s say that I had given that junk to the Met. They would have just put them in their basement. I’ll never have the goodwill of the Establishment …”Even Trump’s father, Fred Trump, had a similar attitude. In 1966, he demolished a 19th-century amusement park in Coney Island. He threw a party at the demolition site with bikini-clad models wearing hard hats and gave guests bricks to throw through the glass of a popular attraction called “Funny Face.”
