JIM GERAGHTY: Trump Leaves His Mark on the White House, Literally.
On the menu today: You know that a whole bunch of mainstream media institutions were just itching to offer some version of . . .
Page A1: Donald Trump Destroys White House (Continued on page A6)
Page A6: Wall as Part of Ballroom Construction Project
The demolition to prepare for the new ballroom facility on the White House grounds is underway, and a lot of people in Washington aren’t happy about it, and contend President Trump has rushed through the usual review and approval process in order to bring a little of that Mar-a-Lago style to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Read on.
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While the exterior of the White House looks largely unchanged from the first photograph taken of it in 1846, the interior has been completely gutted and rebuilt. I wonder how many Americans are even aware of the large-scale renovations conducted during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Historian Michael Beschloss wrote:
Except for the four exterior walls, today’s presidential residence is almost entirely a 1952 imitation of the original.
In 1947, the White House was in danger of internal physical collapse. One day, while President Harry S. Truman took a bath upstairs, a great Blue Room chandelier threatened to crash down on his wife, Bess, and her guests from the Daughters of the American Revolution. The president later joked that he might have unexpectedly dropped through the ceiling naked on the ladies below, and he confessed that the incident made him nervous.
The upstairs floor, he noted, “sagged and moved like a ship at sea.”
Upon investigating the situation, Truman was told that hasty renovations, demanded by various impatient presidents in the past, had led to the weakening or removal of load-bearing walls and other supporting structures. Beams were “staying up from force of habit only,” he was informed, and the mansion had become a firetrap. Truman later wrote that with so many thousands of visitors and presidential guests, “My heart trembles when I think of the disasters we might have had.”
The following year, his daughter Margaret’s piano broke through the floor of the family quarters. In August, Truman recorded in his diary that with his wife away, he had been “moved into the Lincoln Room — for safety — imagine that!” He wrote to his sister that the White House was “about to fall in.” That November, after the president won a full term over Thomas E. Dewey, the first family was whisked across Pennsylvania Avenue to reside in the presidential guest quarters called Blair House.
When I read about pianos crashing through the floor of the White House, I wonder how any teacher can make history sound boring.
Respectful previous occupants of the White House thoughtfully weigh in on Trump’s modifications:
Yes, between selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom to donors and her husband’s tutelage of the interns in the Oval Office, if anyone treated the WH as sacred it was the Clintons. https://t.co/h3vcDISVv0
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 21, 2025
Imagine if Trump installed a swimming pool there in 2025:
I mentioned that FDR built a swimming pool in the White House basement and imagine if Trump had done that, and THIS brilliant post popped out as a result. https://t.co/e9BaXcCasp
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 21, 2025