Kate Wagner likens Trump’s destructive act and aspirational monumentality to Versailles and the Winter Palace, sites which endured the revolutions that sought to undo them. In the self-preserving model of many European palaces, both were transformed into museums. I would argue that ready public access to historical places helps make history salient, irrespective of narrative convenience or public discomfort.
The East Wing, built under Theodore Roosevelt and expanded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, long functioned as an informal base of operations for First Ladies. Rosalynn Carter formally established it as the Office of the First Lady. In doing so, she professionalized what had previously been an unofficial sphere of “women’s work”: the exercise of soft political power through hosting, diplomacy, and public-facing care within the so-called “People’s House.”
Perhaps a better analogy of the destruction of the East Wing is ISIS ransacking Palmyra—zealots who attempt to efface history and its entangled legacies. The legacies of the White House are certainly fraught, but I think the celebration of this act of iconoclasm falls woefully short. Accelerationist spectacle that alienates the vast majority of people—as Trump’s demolition job has—will never evolve to a truly revolutionary position. European revolutionaries knew this; it’s why they always stopped short of burning the major palaces down. I assume the present regime knows this, too, which is why the annex, and not the main home, was earmarked as the site for Mar a Lago: White House edition.