David Ignatius: Destruction of the East Wing Has Really Upset People

IGNATIUS: “So Joe, this is the presidency as wrecking ball. I think that’s one reason that destruction of the East Wing has really upset people in a way that even Trump’s most outrageous other actions haven’t. Peggy Noonan is a very balanced, sensible person, but she was anguished by what she was seeing. And I think it comes down to the sense that we all have, we’ve been to the White House or certainly seen photographs of it, and we think of it as the people’s house. It was built deliberately, to be understated, it’s not a palace like Victorian rulers have had. It’s the people’s house. And Donald Trump has turned it into his own personal property, or at least he behaves that way. You know, in the middle of the night, the bulldozers come in and begin tearing down this historic building. If the ‘Washington Post’ hadn’t run a photograph taken from across the street in the Treasury building, we might not have known for 24 hours that it was even happening. It was stealthy in the middle of the night. And I think that that makes people angry. And as you say, how could it be that members of the Congress that’s supposed to be the co-guarantor of our freedoms and our orderly system of government haven’t said a peep? I mean, it’s deeply troubling. You know, there are lots of reasons why we need a ballroom someplace to have more guests. You’ve been to events at the White House that were held in tents. And you could make a good argument that we do need some space. But not done this way, not done in secret, contrary to the way it was described. Trump seems to have learned nothing from this. But I do think lots of other people watching this have learned a lot. And it’s going to continue to bother them.”