“It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.”
With those words, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton cut to the heart of the national outrage over US President Donald J. Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House, a move that has stunned preservationists, lawmakers, and ordinary citizens.
The East Wing, long home to the offices of First Ladies and the White House social staff, was torn down this week to make way for a sprawling new $300 million Trump-branded ballroom.
It’s not his house.
It’s your house.
And he’s destroying it. pic.twitter.com/YchFF5U1nO
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 21, 2025
The demolition began on Monday, notably, the first workday after roughly seven million Americans participated in the No Kings protests, a mass demonstration against what critics describe as the president’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
“The People’s House” in Ruins
According to Luke Broadwater of The New York Times, the demolition is expected to be completed by the weekend, but new photos show the job is all but done.
A senior administration official also confirmed there are no approved plans or permits for the rebuild, no visible weatherproofing despite the onset of winter, and no sign that historic paintings, furniture, or artefacts were preserved before bulldozers moved in.
“There is only the destruction of the People’s House,” Clinton said in a follow-up post on social media.
The White House has maintained that the ballroom will “modernise and expand” the historic complex, describing the project as a privately funded improvement to accommodate “state events of a new era.”
However, earlier statements by Trump himself, in which he claimed the East Wing “would not be touched”, appear to have been abandoned.
A “Perfect Symbol” of Overreach
Reaction was swift and fierce. Jack Schlossberg, grandson of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, lamented on social media: “Where she planted flowers, he poured concrete.”
An editorial in The Guardian described the demolition as “the perfect symbol of Trump’s presidency – grandiose, divisive, and irreversible.”
Defiance from the Administration
At a briefing earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move, insisting the demolition was “consistent with past presidential expansions” and did not require congressional approval.
She said the president had “every right to improve the working and ceremonial functions of the White House.”
According to reports from Reuters and AP, the project is funded by private donors, including executives from major tech firms, and aims to construct a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that would effectively double the footprint of the original East Wing.
Mounting Legal and Public Pressure
Preservation groups and several members of Congress have called for an investigation into how the demolition proceeded without federal oversight from the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which typically reviews such changes.
Residents and tourists in Washington, DC, say they’re surprise and upset over the White House’s East Wing demolition to make way for President Trump’s new ballroom https://t.co/L0MV0T6QhI pic.twitter.com/SLJDA4yQhm
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 24, 2025
July: President Trump on the new ballroom, “It won’t interfere with the current building. It will be near it, not touching it”
Oct: Footage of a demolition vehicle knocking down parts of the East Wing of the White House
This reminds me of the damage to the Pentagon after 9/11… pic.twitter.com/AqSjfyPSLL
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) October 22, 2025
