Hell Froze Over: WaPo Defends Ballroom in Editorialhttps://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/10/26/hell-froze-over-wapo-defends-ballroom-in-editorial-n3808233Yet, here we are. Hell has, indeed, frozen over.
Now, it would be no surprise to find an opinion piece by a moderate or conservative defending the ballroom addition, even if the Editorial Board were the same as before. Publishing an occasional piece by a Republican to present the image of balance is standard practice.
But this piece is an Editorial, presented as the official position of the Editors. And it is a slap in the face to liberals, both by endorsing the ballroom itself and by slamming how hard it is to do anything in America anymore.
The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. Many see the rubble as a metaphor for President Donald Trump’s reckless disregard of norms and the rule of law, a reflection of his willingness to bulldoze history and a temple to a second Gilded Age, paid for by corporate donors. Others see what they love about Trump: A lifelong builder boldly pursuing a grand vision, a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo and a developer slashing through red tape that would stymie any normal politician.
In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible. Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.
Everybody who is not Trump-deranged knows that if any other president had done the same thing, the reaction would be entirely different. The issue is Trump, not the ballroom. Nobody has any special feelings about the East Wing--it's likely that many people who are blowing their tops didn't even know that it existed. They probably thought the East Wing was just the eastern half of the Executive Mansion, which is really a different building entirely.
Though the fundraising for the ballroom creates problematic conflicts of interest, two examples validate Trump’s aggressive approach. After a fence jumper got inside the White House in 2014, it was obvious that better perimeter fencing needed to be installed. But doing so involved five public meetings of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) over two years, as members took pains to ensure the fencing complied with environmental rules. Construction didn’t begin until July 2019.
Or consider the modest Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial near the National Air and Space Museum. Congress authorized its creation in 1999. Architect Frank Gehry was selected in 2009. The NCPC rejected Gehry’s initial design proposal in 2014 before approving a revised plan the next year. The Commission of Fine Arts gave its approval in 2017. The memorial wasn’t opened until late 2020. By contrast, Eisenhower planned and executed D-Day in about six months.
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This is a one-two punch of an editorial, not because it will move the needle in any significant way or because the Post is suddenly going to become a Trump outlet. The ballroom issue is, in itself, minor. It is a manufactured controversy.
What the editorial does is calmly point out that 1) Trump is right in what he is doing, and 2) that he is having to "subvert norms" because the norms are insane and destructive.
My emphases. I have a feeling that the writer(s) of the WashPost "official" editorial had multiple experiences at state dinners with porta-cans and maybe the insufficiency of portable air conditioners and/or heaters.
Why it took over a week for the WashPost to write and publish this common sense I don't know, though I suspect
Trump-Hatred may have been a factor.
Maybe someone with a mole could let DU-folk know about this new reason to hate the WashPost,
, if they haven't found it already.
