Here’s the problem with fuming over the bricks and mortar that was once the East Wing of the White House: The time and energy should go to understanding and reacting to the damage the administration has already caused to our institutions and ideals.
Here are just a few of them: The chaos the administration is inflicting on higher education, its attacks on court precedents upholding voting rights, disregard for public policy that looks out for farmers and other working people trying to build or maintain a decent middle-class way of life, not to mention the chaos the administration is unleashing around the world.
Here are further examples of Trump-inspired damage (in case you needed more):
– The administration has now killed at least 57 people in the southern hemisphere, blown up in boats that Trump claims (without evidence) were carrying drugs. The fiery murders in open waters were carried out by drones. The deaths have now spread from the coasts of Venezuela and the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean near Mexico.
– An ad featuring former President Ronald Reagan speaking out against tariffs back in 1987 stuck in President Donald Trump’s craw. Reagan’s address undercut Trump’s adoration of tariffs as a bargaining chip, pointing out the limitations of such a strategy, a view also shared by leading economists. The ad so angered Trump that he vowed to hit Canada with new tariffs, a childish reaction untethered from economic principle.
– The administration is itching to send National Guard troops into American cities (or at least those deemed crime-ridden and democratically controlled). This is dangerous for public safety and for civil liberties. It is also a step toward normalizing the idea of using the U.S. military as a force not to protect the nation, but to police its citizens.
– Speaking of U.S. citizens, ProPublica has documented 170 cases of citizens being detained or arrested at immigration raids or protests. The people, a few of whom were pregnant, have been held without access to attorneys or their families.
– The Supreme Court has temporarily granted the government the right to use race as a precursor in Los Angeles for stopping people suspected of immigration violations, all but putting a scarlet letter on anyone darker in skin tone or speaking a language other than English. Given that the administration’s goal is ramping up deportations, rogue or inadequately trained agents are incentivized to act with impunity.
– Thousands of Americans are eyeing their cupboards, unsure of how they’ll feed their families without the help of government assistance. Others will soon decide to forgo health insurance, unable to afford escalating premiums. Both the intricacies of healthcare and food assistance are issues that could be managed by a responsible, less partisan Congress.
– Congressional maps are being redrawn, without the guidance of new census figures. This is a brazen maneuver of gerrymandering. It began with the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri, which are hopeful to steal congressional seats from Democrats. Democrats are lining up to perform their own version of this subverting of fairness in voting rights.
But go ahead, shed a few tears, spend a few minutes rampaging on social media about the late East Wing. Unfortunately, its demolition is merely the latest bull in the China-shop tantrum of our petulant president.
The East Wing’s destruction does deserve news coverage, just not at the expense of other issues.
A 1,000-person, 90,000 square foot ballroom is planned to replace the wing. This will not be the last time that Trump pursues gaudy glamour, which he’s long misinterpreted as a marker of class. Rest assured, there will be more gold leaf.
Trump’s ardent fans love the temper tantrums that Democrats are throwing over the East Wing. The louder the left’s outcry, the more robust MAGA supporters jeer. For some, recklessness from the White House is proof of Trump’s visionary status.
The more honest assessment is the appeal of a rebel. Trump might as well be James Dean to some voters. They’ll cheer his every move if it appears to anger liberals. The problem is that while everyone is focused on the outrage, Trump will be skirting off elsewhere to cause even greater damage.
Don’t miss far more serious administration blows against the sanctity of voting rights, individual liberties to peacefully protest, sane trade policy, and the morality of the U.S. in how it conducts itself globally.
Rather, Americans need to accept that the Trump administration calls for democracy-watching by triage. We need to choose carefully where to focus, for impact, and the ability to limit the destruction effectively.
Mary Sanchez is a reporter and writer who examines the cultural changes sweeping across America.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.