By Aaron Blake, CNN
An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on October 23, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Photo: AFP / Getty Images / Eric Lee
Analysis: When President Donald Trump reflected last week on the looming construction of his White House ballroom, the longtime real estate developer was practically giddy about the lack of red tape. He noted his New York projects often took years to break ground.
“They said, ‘Sir, you can start tonight,'” Trump said. “I said, what are you talking about? ‘You have zero zoning conditions. You’re the president of’ – I said, you got to be kidding.”
The president continued to marvel: “He said, ‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.'”
Trump has now done what he wants – in ways that are causing plenty of consternation.
Images of the demolition of the existing East Wing, where the new ballroom will be located, have spurred apoplexy among Trump’s detractors and growing criticism from architectural and preservation groups.
Demolition continues on the East Wing of the White House, with columns from the North Portico of the White House seen at right, on October 23, 2025, in Washington, DC.
Photo: AFP / Jim Watson
The optics have also, perhaps tellingly, set off some metaphorical damage control at the White House.
The Treasury Department, which sits next to the East Wing, has instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition. (The department claimed in a statement to CNN this was to protect sensitive information.) The administration has railed against the “manufactured outrage” about the demolition in a series of social media posts and TV interviews. And the White House on Tuesday published an extensive blog post recapping previous renovations to the grounds.
But there are a number of reasons why this situation is remarkable – and different from your usual presidential renovation.
A big one is that the scenes this week fly in the face of how this was billed.
When the project was announced in late July, Trump assured it “won’t interfere with the current building”.
“It won’t be – it’ll be near it but not touching it,” he said at the time.
Photo: AFP / Getty Images / Eric Lee
Much of the East Wing has now been torn down. While many Trump defenders wagered early this week photos made the demolition look more extensive than it actually was, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday that “it appeared that what remained was also headed for demolition, with no evidence that the structure was being protected and only jagged damage visible in the exposed building”.
Asked to account for Trump’s past comments, White House aide Will Scharf effectively acknowledged that plans had changed.
“The scope and size was always subject to vary as the project developed,” Scharf, who also oversees federal construction as head of the National Capital Planning Commission, told Reuters.
The White House also assured that the construction planning would go through a robust process.
In a statement when the project was announced, chief of staff Susie Wiles said Trump and the White House were “fully committed to working with the appropriate organisations to preserve the special history of the White House”.
There is very little evidence that’s actually happened.
The facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Photo: AFP / Kevin Dietsch
A number of groups that you might expect to be involved in such a process have criticised the lack of consultation or pushed for more.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered non-profit tasked with preserving historic buildings, on Tuesday requested a pause in the demolition. It urged the White House to “go through the legally required public review processes … and to invite comment from the public”.
The Society of Architectural Historians last week expressed “great concern” about the ballroom project. The group said it generally limited “its advocacy to matters of national and international import”, while urging a more “rigorous and deliberate design and review process”.
And the American Institute of Architects back in August urged a number of steps that don’t appear to have been followed, including a rigorous search for the best architect and transparency about the process and its funding.
Trump has said the US$200 million (NZ$347m) project, which he said last week has been fully funded, is being paid for by private donations. Some donors have been named. But the White House has not yet released a comprehensive list or a breakdown of the donations.
“This is more than an addition to a building,” the American Institute of Architects wrote in August, arguing that it should be “guided by a process that is preservation-first, performance-driven, and accountable to the public”.
As recently as last month, Scharf suggested that even the National Capital Planning Commission he leads hadn’t been involved up to that point. He noted that it had no specific role in the demolition aspect.
“I know the president thinks very highly of this commission, and I’m excited for us to play a role in the ballroom project when the time is appropriate for us to do so,” Scharf said.
And the last point is that, yes, other presidents have overseen renovations. But the scale of this is on another level.
Heavy machinery tears down a section of the East Wing of the White House as construction begins on President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom.
Photo: AFP / Pedro Ugarte
Many of the projects listed by the White House on Tuesday were much smaller and included no structural changes – like building swimming pools, internal refurbishments and restorations, landscaping and hardscaping.
The list even included President Barack Obama installing a garden for the White House kitchen and converting a tennis court so that it could be used for basketball.
The Society of Architectural Historians said the new White House ballroom will be the first “major change to its exterior appearance” since 1942. And even then, that project was merely adding to the existing East Wing, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt adding a second story featuring additional office space and an emergency bunker.
Even that relatively minor change led to criticisms from Republicans, who called the project wasteful and accused Roosevelt of doing it for political purposes, according to the White House Historical Association.
The ballroom will also be massive. It was initially described as accommodating 650 guests, but Trump told NBC News last month that it would wind up being “a little bigger” than initially billed. He has more recently said that number could stretch to nearly 1000.
Trump often exaggerates the size of properties, so it’s not clear whether the ballroom will now actually be bigger than the initially planned 90,000-square-foot facility. But the National Trust for Historic Preservation cautioned Tuesday that even the initially planned size would “overwhelm the White House itself,” given the main White House building is 55,000 square feet.
And again, that calls into question how this project was billed.
In between his boasts about his power to make this happen quickly last week, Trump expressed that he “didn’t want to dwarf anything”.
-CNN