This kind of thing, which seems small, is pretty obnoxious because it is a lie and just gives partisans more cover to create their own reality. In the clip below, Jesse Watters claims that Obama spent $400 million on a basketball court and to “rewire a few pipes.”
But here’s the deal. This conflates the basketball court with other major renovations and, more importantly from my perspective, ignores that the renovations were approved and funded by Congress. Moreover, for accuracy’s sake, they were authorized before Obama was elected.
The whole thing is detailed here via Snopes with extensive references: Unraveling claims about $376M White House renovation under Obama.
The money in question went into upgrading heating, cooling, electrical, and fire-alarm systems.
The basketball court addition to the tennis courts was a separate project, and was, as best as I can tell, paid for by the Obamas and involved stripes and baskets being installed–hardly a massive reconfiguration. I have seen a $30K price tag on social media, which strikes me as unlikely, but even so, this is not comparable to what Trump is doing.
For what it is worth, there is a universe in which I am fine with a ballroom being built. There is a universe wherein I am even fine with tearing down the East Wing. But in that universe, neither of these things is done via the sole discretion of the sitting president. In that universe, proper processes and consensus were reached, and the president didn’t treat the White House like his personal property.
In that universe, the president doesn’t say and think things like the following (via Reuters).
When President Donald Trump met with donors for his new ballroom at the White House earlier this month, he relayed a story that thrilled his real estate mogul heart.
“I said, ‘How long will it take me?’ ‘Sir, you can start tonight, you have no approvals,’” Trump said on October 15, describing a conversation he’d had about the project. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ They said, ‘Sir, this is the White House, you’re the president of the United States, you can do anything you want.‘”
Emphasis mine.
And, BTW, not kinglike at all.
Back to Watters, who, I am sure, considers himself an entertainer and therefore not bound by any semblance of journalistic ethics, the willingness of people like him to sound like North Korean propagandists is just maddening.
Also, the degree to which every comparison seems to need to bring up Obama is telling.
Ross Douthat did something similar in his ridiculous column in the NYT yesterday, Why Trump’s East Wing Demolition Needed to Happen. For reasons that make little sense to me, save because Obama is Obama, Douthat frames his piece by comparison to the Obama presidential center in Chicago.
The controversial public building is ugly and intimidating, architectural vainglory battening on presidential ego, inappropriate to its setting, unmoored from memory and tradition.
I’m talking, naturally, about Barack Obama’s unfinished presidential center, currently looming like a Star Wars barracks over the residents of Chicago’s South Side.
This is, to be kind, silly. Douthat can dislike the design all he likes, but a wholly private activity, whether linked to a former president or not, is rather irrelevant to what the sitting president does to the White House and, more importantly, how he does so.
Trump being Trump, the ballroom project is proceeding without much external consultation and with a whiff of private-donor corruption. But many of the complaints from outraged liberals are more historical and aesthetic, accusing Trump of bulldozing American heritage to build something crass and gaudy in its place.
First, more than a whiff of corruption.
Second, while a lot of people have issued complaints on aesthetic grounds, that’s not the main problem, and Douthat knows it.
Third, I can’t even decide if Douthat is making an argument about development and NIMBYism or just his own, personal architectural preferences. I don’t plan on spending a lot of time untangling those possibilities.
I will, however, say this: opposing the tearing down of the East Wing because Trump wants a ballroom and has proceeded because he can is not about NIMBYism, nor is it some commentary on how hard it is to do development in the US. It is just a president acting however he wants, the rules and laws be damned. Normalizing or accepting that as ok is just another step in the authoritarian direction.
I am looking at you, WaPo editorial board: In defense of the White House ballroom.
It is one thing to argue that it is often too hard to build things. It is yet another to extol a mercurial and dictatorial approach.
It’s no wonder we are where we are.
