East Wing of White House could be torn down 'within days' as Potus pursues his ballroom dream: Report

Officials from US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday confirmed to various news outlets that the White House’s East Wing will be demolished ‘within days’. However, the revelation is coming at a time when the administration has not submitted plans for the new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees the construction of federal buildings.

While speaking on the matter at the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump was asked by Reuters to respond to the widespread surprise that the entire East Wing is being torn down. The president said that the wing he described as a separate building “was never thought of as being much; it was a very small building”.

“Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building,” he continued. “In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure.” He went on to point at a model of the new ballroom, which was placed on a table in front of him. The model also revealed a new structure leading to the ballroom, located in the area where the East Wing used to be.

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“The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don’t touch the White House," Trump averred. “That’s a bridge, a glass bridge going from the White House to the ballroom,” Trump said, of the new structure that will replace the East Wing. The president insisted that the result is “going to be probably the finest ballroom ever built” and that the ballroom is “being paid for 100 per cent by me and some friends of mine”.

The East Wing might be gone by this weekend

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported, citing a senior administration official, that the ballroom plans will mean the demolition of the entire East Wing. The officials, who asked to remain anonymous, maintained that the demolition should be finished by this weekend.

Meanwhile, two nameless officials told NBC News similar information, noting the entire East Wing of the White House will be demolished “within days”. On Tuesday, the White House told Reuters it intended to send plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, an agency that typically approves and monitors construction on federal buildings.

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However, the demolition process already began earlier this week, with reporters taking video of a backhoe ripping out chunks of the White House’s exterior. Plans for Trump’s 90,000 sq ft ballroom were made public in the late summer, with Trump saying he would personally fund the $200m construction. “Just another way to spend my money on this construction,” he said at the time.

The White House officials noted that the demolition is allowed without the commission’s approval. Will Scharf, the Trump-appointed head of the commission, who is also a White House staff secretary, said in September there was a difference between demolition and rebuilding work. Only the commission can approve new construction.

“The National Planning Commission does not require permits for demolition, only for vertical construction. Permits will be submitted to the NPC at the appropriate time," a White House official told The Guardian in a statement.

But in a letter sent to the White House on Tuesday, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a leading historic preservation non-profit created by Congress, told the White House that demolition plans were “legally required” to go through public review and urged Trump to pause demolition. “We are deeply concerned that the massing height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself – it is 55,000 sq ft – and may also permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House with its two smaller, and lower, East and West Wings,” the group wrote in the letter.

White House defends the move

Amid the backlash over the demolition, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told Fox News on Tuesday that “there’s a lot of fake outrage out there right now”.

“While many presidents have dreamt about this, it is actually President Trump who is doing something about it. And he is the builder-in-chief. In large part, he was re-elected to this people’s house because he is good at building things,” Leavitt said, noting that many presidents had made changes to the White House.

However, critics have pointed out that, over the summer, Trump said new construction would not affect the existing structure. “It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and [it] pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” Trump said earlier.

It is pertinent to note that during his first term in office, the White House appointed the commission to install a new fence. However, it was a much smaller project than the construction of the new ballroom.

With inputs from Reuters.