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Donald Trump has reduced the East Wing of the White House to rubble to build a $300 million ballroom. Strictly Come Donald! Many of the President’s detractors had never heard of the East Wing but now care about nothing else because he’s levelled it. That is how the culture war works. Pick your side and stop thinking. The East Wing is an extension to the White House. It’s where they do calligraphy, hang Christmas decorations, and watch TV in an ugly private cinema. Now people – that is, rich liberals – are losing their minds. They are staring at before and after satellite images of the East Wing as if it is a crime scene. They are talking about it as if it is – or rather was, sorry – the Temple of Karnak. It’s true, the East Wing was ancient for America. It was built in 1902. Besides, for a people who profess to love the White House, they spend a lot of time watching it blow up on screen. Have you seen White House Down? It’s excellent. I’m not saying Donald Trump hasn’t done terrible things – I was there the day his Chinooks terrorised the reed warblers of Regent’s Park when he stayed at the Ambassador’s residence there in 2018 – but this isn’t one of them. There was a reason to demolish the East Wing: it’s not big enough for state dinners. The State Dining Room takes 140 and the East Room 200, and America needs more friends than that. So, they had them in tents in the garden and everyone was sad. The lawn was sad – it was ruined. The presidential helicopter Marine One was sad – it couldn’t land. And the dignitaries were sad because on the most gilded day of their lives they had to use portapotties. Even the kitchen staff were sad – it can’t be easy serving a state dinner in a gazebo. But I doubt rich liberals care about the kitchen staff. The ballroom will be vulgar. Of course it will be. Have you seen Trump Tower? Have you seen Las Vegas? Have you seen America? Trump Tower looks like sex Lego. Las Vegas looks like the inside of a Bond villain’s head. The ballroom will be vast and white and gold. The drawings look like, well, a tiny bit fell off ‘Germania’ – Hitler’s ideal Berlin – and dropped into a bucket of paint. But I have studied the aesthetics of tyranny, and its architecture is the least awful thing about it. Emperor Augustus found Rome in brick and left it in marble, and all that: and rich Liberals should be the first ones to appreciate it. Do you remember when President Obama teased Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in 2011? He presented a garish vision of a Trump White House resort, complete with a giant neon sign and the inscription: ‘Hotel. Casino. Golf Course.’ A joke became a prophecy. And this is why Trump does it. Because it drives his opponents insane and they can’t think of anything else. Least of all beating him. Perhaps the more honest ones will look at the rubble and know – the rubble is me? In the UK we are so scared of, ahem, amending public buildings. Just look at the Palace of Westminster – it’s a fire waiting to happen, riddled with asbestos, the stonework is exploding, no one knows what wiring has been stuffed into what crevice and the basement smells like hell. When my local MP asked me if I had any questions for him, I just said: ‘Do you know where your fire exit is?’ If anyone other than our elected representatives and their staff worked there, there would be an outcry. They have been promising to fix it for years. But democracy costs money – £22 billion and rising in this case – and they kick it into the long grass. It’s the British way. One day you will turn on News At Ten and it will be there, just on fire. Buckingham Palace, too, is surprisingly untouchable for an ordinary – very ordinary – eighteenth century aristocratic house with a repulsive 1913 frontage. While it has a nice garden, I give it that, the building’s so horrible even the King doesn’t want to live in it. Should a future Prime Minister Farage look at the Palace of Westminster or Buckingham Palace and simply say: ‘It isn’t working, I am going to replace it with a building shaped like a pint glass but concrete’ I wouldn’t judge him on that. Or not just on that. Buildings don’t matter. People do. You can love the past of bricks, badges and flags too much. It isn’t always better, and people who loathe Trump being in the White House or the prospect of Farage in Number 10 should know that more than anyone.
