Donald Trump could bulldoze an even more iconic chunk of White House in his megalomanic pursuit of grandeur, according to his biographer Michael Wolff.
Having done “the unthinkable—in any other administration the undoable” by demolishing the East Wing, the 79-year-old president could start looking at the West Wing, Wolff said on Thursday’s episode of the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
The 123-year-old West Wing occupies an iconic place in the nation’s history and pop culture. Its Oval Office, the president’s executive workspace, is one of the world’s most recognizable rooms.
But for Trump, “a figure of nothing so much as pure grandiosity,” Wolff said, “it must feel dispiriting to show up there every day—even the Oval Office is small.”
The author noted, “The West Wing, for people who have never been there, is actually kind of startling because it is a warren of small offices. It always reminds me of a kind of a college admission center.”
Co-host Joanna Coles pointed out that the White House is “deliberately modest.” The republic’s Founders believed the president’s residence should be modest and plain—not at all like the gilded palaces of European kings.
According to Wolff, that means “[the West Wing has] nothing to suggest, as Trump obviously wants it to be suggested, that he is the grandest, most powerful, historical being of all time.”
Wolff recalled that the set of Aaron Sorkin’s TV drama The West Wing felt “so much grander than the actual West Wing itself,” with Coles adding that Trump, a former reality TV star, was likely disappointed by how “flat” the building is in real life versus on TV shows.
With Trump having torn down the East Wing last week without bothering to give a heads-up to the American public, Wolff said: “Why not Trump just say, ‘Well we’re going to tear this down, we have corporate contributors, we’re going to build the West Wing as it should look’—as it no doubt looks in his head.”
“Perhaps he can have a throne behind the Resolute desk,” Coles quipped.
President Theodore Roosevelt built the first iteration of the West Wing in 1902, moving his office from the second floor of the Executive Residence to the new building, which replaced 19th-century greenhouses.
After renovations doubled the West Wing’s size in 1909, President William Howard Taft became the first president to work in the “Oval Office.”
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt significantly expanded the building again and relocated the Oval Office to its current location.
The West Wing also houses the Cabinet Room, the Situation Room, and the Roosevelt Room, as well as various offices, including those for the vice president. It is connected to the Executive Residence by the West Wing Colonnade.
Wolff suggested that Trump could charge ahead with his next demolition without warning and wave off criticism by insisting his corporate cheerleaders are footing the bill, as he did with the $300 million gilded ballroom for which he destroyed the East Wing, even though he had promised to leave it untouched.
Drawing parallels to Trump’s efforts to expand his power and defy democratic norms, Wolff said, “He can take the wrecking ball to the East Wing. He can take the wrecking ball to democracy. So can he take the wrecking ball to the West Wing and almost entirely replace the idea that we have of the presidency of the United States [and] of the permanence of that.”
The former real estate mogul, who told reporters this week that he’d “love to do” an unconstitutional third term, is irritated by the temporary nature of the presidency and the White House, finding it hard to accept that he’s merely a “renter” and a “borrower,” Wolff argued.
Trump may even go beyond looking at the West Wing, according to Wolff, who previously shared on the podcast that it is “official” within the White House that Trump’s 90,000 square-foot ballroom “will be called the Trump Ballroom.”
“Who can doubt that the ambition is for the White House itself to be called the ‘Trump White House?’ So we’ll do the East Wing, we’ll do the West Wing, and then we’ll do the whole place,” the author said.
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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