Whose House? Trump’s House.
A home renovation project only an aspiring emperor would love.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was back in the hot seat yesterday, giving closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee over his contradictory statements about his past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Ahead of Lutnick’s appearance, Oversight Republicans weren’t exactly rallying to his defense: “I haven’t seen wrongdoing in the email correspondence,” Chair James Comer told reporters. “But he wasn’t 100 percent truthful with whether or not he had been on the island.”
And afterward, Democrats were scathing in their assessment of his performance: “After what we have seen so far, I feel very comfortable in saying Howard Lutnick is a pathological liar who is enabling the most egregious coverup in American history,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari said. Happy Thursday.
No Kings. No Ballroom.
by William Kristol
Donald Trump’s ballroom isn’t just an architectural monstrosity and a blunderbuss of bad taste. It is an assault on American republicanism.
On Saturday, October 18, 2025, somewhere between 5 and 7 million Americans demonstrated under the banner of No Kings.
Ahead of the rallies, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed the demonstrators would be anti-American and that the message of the rallies would be “Hate America.” He even predicted, “Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see Antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists in full display, the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”
Johnson lost his bet. The protests were very American. Indeed, one could say that they were animated by “the foundational truths of this republic.” Their spirit and energy followed from the assertion of the Declaration of Independence that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Their propriety and legality followed from the Constitution’s guarantee of “the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
And so after that Saturday’s peaceful and patriotic protests, all that was left for most of the No Kings haters was a retreat into sullen silence.
But Trump had a response. Two days later, on October 20, bulldozers suddenly appeared on the White House grounds to begin demolishing the East Wing in order to make way for Trump’s ballroom. There had been no consultation with Congress, or with organizations entrusted with the task of historical preservation, or with the public. Trump couldn’t stop or even discredit citizens rallying on town squares across America. But he was going to show that the White House was not the people’s house but his house. He could and would reshape it unilaterally as he alone decided.
Trump’s action was anti-democratic and anti-republican in spirit. It also comported with his psychological needs. As Timothy Devinney explained recently, the gilded ballroom was one of Trump’s projects that
share a common psychological origin in what might be called an “edifice complex,” which emerges when individuals in positions of authority, uncertain of their place in history, attempt to pre-empt posterity’s judgment with grandiose construction projects. It reflects insecurity and egomania in equal measure.
This is surely why the ballroom—like the planned Triumphal Arch and the renaming of the Kennedy Center—has had such outsized importance to Trump personally. But the destruction of the old East Wing, the transformation of a people’s house into an emperor’s palace, also symbolizes his broader effort to replace the old republican regime with an imperial one. It’s fair to point out that there had already been, for quite a long time, too many imperial encroachments on our old republicanism. But this was a new and dramatic step in the direction of imperial grandiosity replacing republican simplicity.
On August 22, 1864, one of Donald Trump’s predecessors in the presidency, Abraham Lincoln, addressed soldiers returning home during the Civil War from the White House balcony:
I almost always feel inclined, when I say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for the day, but for all time to come, that we should perpetuate for our children’s children that great and free government which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen, temporarily, to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.
Our presidents have understood themselves to be temporary occupants of “this big White House.” Trump thinks of himself as the constructor of a permanent Donald J. Trump Ballroom that will dwarf the old, republican White House.
The new Republican party’s budget reconciliation bill, unveiled this week, includes $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom. After last month’s assassination attempt, the rationale for the appropriation is dressed up as presidential and national security. But that was never Trump’s original justification. He wanted a grand edifice built by him and named after him.
In fact, it’s telling that Trump tried to undercut public resistance by stressing that it would be paid for by private donations. But leaving aside all the corruption that this entails, it does bring home that this is a private and imperial project, not a public and republican one.
There are weightier matters of state on which to confront Trump at this moment than his ballroom. But the billion-dollar ballroom is a potent symbol and a teachable moment. It’s a good fight to have.
But, Trump apologists will say, the East Wing is in shambles! There were facilities that were once there that need to be replaced, and so would you just do nothing? The answer is Yes. If those facilities were so important, Trump shouldn’t have taken a sledgehammer to them in the first place. In any case, the area has been a construction site for six months now, and the presidency has been able to function.
When a president who believes in democracy and republicanism succeeds Trump, he or she can restore an appropriate East Wing to the people’s White House. For now, we can fight to stop the ballroom. If this means leaving the area immediately east of the White House as a construction site—or rather, a destruction site—for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, so be it. Let its ugliness exemplify the ugliness of the Trump era. Let its rubble symbolize what he has tried to do to the American republic.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump’s Corruption Is Going to Sink Him… Conditions are right for voters to stop turning a blind eye to his greed, grift, and gold leaf, argues MONA CHAREN.
Todd Blanche Blew Up His Own Case Against The SPLC… On The Illegal News, ANDREW WEISSMAN joins SARAH LONGWELL to explain why the acting AG’s case against the civil rights group is already dead on arrival—and they break down the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision.
Ted Turner, 1938–2026… A man who changed the world, remembers SONNY BUNCH.
FBI Raids Virginia Democrat Who Beat Republicans at Redistricting… On Bulwark+ Takes, WILL SALETAN joins SAM STEIN to discuss the breaking news that the FBI raided the office of Virginia Democrat Louise Lucas, the bizarre presence of a Fox News crew already on the scene, and the FBI’s reported investigation into leaks connected to a damaging Atlantic story about FBI Director Kash Patel.
Quick Hits
STRAIT STILL SHUT: Whatever the Trump administration says about it, it remains incredibly risky for ships to try to transit the Strait of Hormuz without Iran’s permission. On Tuesday, a French cargo ship that was attempting to run the strait under the auspices of America’s “Project Freedom” was hit by an Iranian strike, injuring eight crew members. The New York Times has more:
A U.S. military official said the French ship did not follow specific Project Freedom guidelines and check-in procedures, adding that when the vessel came under fire, it asked Oman for help, not the United States.
But [shipping company] CMA CGM said in a statement that the ship’s transit through the strait “was carried out as part of” Project Freedom. It added that the voyage was done “in coordination” with the U.S. Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping and “in strict accordance with the required guidelines and procedures.”
Shortly after the incident, Trump announced a “pause” in Project Freedom, ostensibly as a goodwill offering for renewed U.S.–Iran negotiations. More likely, he had simply rediscovered what he first learned eight weeks ago at the outset of the war: No amount of American military might is sufficient to keep Iranian fighters from making the strait too risky to transit.
LITTLE MAN, BIG EGO: FBI Director Kash Patel has had just about enough of your mockery, your fake news, your clowning around! Last month, Patel sued the Atlantic for reporting that people around him were concerned he was behaving erratically and had at times been intoxicated on the job. And yesterday, MSNow reported that Patel has launched a criminal investigation into the story’s author, journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick:
The sources said the so-called insider threat investigation is highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information and because it is focused on leaks to a reporter. The agents involved are part of an insider threats unit based in Huntsville, Alabama, the sources added.
Typically, leak investigations look into government officials who may have disclosed state secrets or classified documents. Journalists who receive and publish such information have typically only been involved as potential witnesses.
As is so often the case, the alleged behavior by Kash and his klatch is as much clownish as evil. As writer Derek Thompson put it: “If, as you say, the reporter ‘fabricated’ those stories about you without talking to anybody from your department, why are you demanding to search her phone . . . for leaks . . . from your department?”
PRESIDENTIAL FIGHT CLUB: When Donald Trump asked a teenage boy the other day whether “you think you could take me in a fight,” the numbers munchers at YouGov pricked up their ears. Immediately, they put the question out as a poll: Who do you think would win in a physical fight between you and Donald Trump?
The results were amusing. Fully 75 percent of Democratic respondents thought they could take the president, compared to only 5 percent who thought he’d hand them their asses. Republicans, however, seemed more torn by the question: A third said they thought they’d be victorious, while 39 percent said the president would come out on top.
It’s fun to imagine the struggle of the MAGA mind faced with this question, which sets two load-bearing pillars of the ideology against one another—who’s a bigger alpha-male he-man, me or the president? For our part, though, we think the median Republican is selling himself short on this one. It’s probably for the best that the fighting days of our near-octagenarian president who claims his hands are perennially bruised from shaking too many hands are behind him.
Cheap Shots
Bill Kristol's writing is on point, as always. Let the destruction and rubble stay. Let us all reflect on what has been done.
He’s not planning to leave. The ballroom is a cover for the bunker. He’s firing all of the military brass. He’s moved his cabinet into military housing. This is not ego. We need to start talking about this as a possibility.