BS BULLETIN:
- Rolling Stone’s John Avlon wants 2028 Democratic candidates to pledge to demolish President Trump’s new White House ballroom.
- Avlon argues the old East Wing should be rebuilt to restore the White House to its pre-Trump appearance.
- His solution to Trump taking a “wrecking ball” to history? Another wrecking ball.
Rolling Stone has apparently discovered the perfect way to protest President Donald Trump changing the White House: change it all over again.
In a new column, former Democratic congressional candidate and CNN commentator John Avlon argues that Democrats seeking the presidency in 2028 should pledge to demolish Trump’s massive new White House ballroom and reconstruct the East Wing that stood there before Trump.
Avlon’s headline doesn’t exactly bury the wrecking ball: “Donald Trump Took a Wrecking Ball to the White House. The Next President Must Do the Same.”
Trump ordered the East Wing demolished last year to make way for the ballroom, setting off legal challenges and a furious battle over presidential authority to make such a dramatic alteration to the White House complex.
The Supreme Court recently allowed construction to continue in a 5-4 decision. The majority focused on whether the National Trust for Historic Preservation had standing to bring its challenge rather than deciding whether Trump’s project itself was lawful. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissent and wrote that the construction was likely unlawful because Congress had not approved it.
But Avlon doesn’t merely want Democrats to complain about Trump’s changes.
He wants them torn down.
Under his proposal, a future Democratic president would preserve underground security infrastructure but demolish the ballroom above it and reconstruct the East Wing, restoring what he calls the White House’s “historic symmetry.”
It’s not an entirely new idea.
Rep. Ted Lieu has called for the next Democratic president to restore changes Trump has made to the White House, Kennedy Center and Washington, while former Rep. Eric Swalwell previously argued that Democratic presidential candidates should pledge to take a wrecking ball to Trump’s ballroom on their first day in office.
That leaves Democrats with an interesting potential plank for 2028:
Vote for us. We’ll tear down the thing Trump built because tearing down things at the White House is wrong.
MY QUICK TAKE:
Nothing says “respect our historic institutions” quite like promising voters you’ll arrive at the White House with a demolition crew.
And here’s my prediction: The first Democratic president who actually inherits that giant ballroom will suddenly discover it is an irreplaceable national treasure — approximately five minutes before their first state dinner.
