The White House Renovation is Yet Another Distraction

President Trump has once again decided to remake the foremost symbol of America to his own taste. In a way, it’s ironic that as he tears down the East Wing in a reordering of the proverbial executive branch, the Capitol remains standing, just as it always has, even as it sits impotent.

Previous to this, Donald Trump had also remade the Rose Garden, shifting it from a more natural façade into a cement-dominated, austere patio. The changes don’t stop there. One clip from any Trump press conference inside the Oval Office will show an extreme proliferation of the amount of gold and gold leaf inside of the White House itself.

There is certainly some symbolism to be had here – just as Trump has remade the White House, he has remade the executive branch, and indeed the government, to suit his own tastes. One can see inspiration from Mar-a-Lago in certain aspects of the current design of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and one can also see inspiration from the Trump companies in the presidency itself. Look no further than his book, The Art of the Deal, in which he details how he employed mob-like tactics in order to pressure poor people out of his condominiums to increase his profit. Just as then, he’s going up to other countries with a baseball bat, threatening to fracture their kneecaps unless they do what he says. A baseball bat is a fitting metaphor again – blunt, and in this case, a perversion of a piece of Americana. That’s what Trump is doing now with the White House. He’s tearing down something irreplaceable, some true historical treasure of America.

What may shock you even more is that I don’t particularly care.

It is somewhat blasphemous, yes. The fact that it was funded by purely private donors strikes me as particularly egregious, with opportunities rife for corruption at a time when millions of Americans are going hungry due to policies he has pushed through.

But frankly – there were also benefits to this move. There was already a need to increase the amount of space that a president can have for hosting diplomatic events, and keeping such a venue on-site, with security concerns that are easy to manage, makes sense. Now, it does seem as if it will also have the veneer of gauche opulence that the rest of the White House flashes. But as a matter of function, it makes sense.

So I don’t really care. What I really cared about, though, was what wasn’t being said. Supposedly left-leaning news outlets, such as MSNBC and the New York Times, have decried the changes, and blasted them in the lead story and the front page for days. This is not a good thing. A major part of Trump’s political prowess comes not from his policies; indeed, when asked about his policies without being connected to his name, they are overwhelmingly unpopular. It comes from his ability to monopolize the press cycle. For him, any press has always been good press. As long as news keeps churning out stories every other day, he is able to quickly pivot and retreat from something with no political blowback.

And this demolition is yet another chapter in a saga not yet over. These news outlets are already tarred as “radical-left propagandists,” why can’t they start putting out some “left-wing propaganda?” Why not have some left-biased news? Already, to any progressive, calling the New York Times “left-wing” is a joke. Let’s make it serious.

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