The East Wing of the White House is completely demolished to make way for Trump’s $300M ballroom, photos show

The entire East Wing of the White House was demolished this week as construction on President Trump’s $300 million ballroom moved forward despite fierce criticism from preservationists and Democrats.

Photos published by the Associated Press on Thursday showed the entirety of the 123-year-old East Wing reduced to rubble. Demolition crews began tearing down the two-story structure on Monday.

Satellite photos published by ABC News showed that two historic magnolia trees — commemorating Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt — and the 122-year-old Jacqueline Kennedy Garden were also leveled during the East Wing demolition.

When the ballroom project was announced in July, Trump pledged that construction “won’t interfere with the current building.”

“It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” the president said at the time.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Trump defended the teardown as necessary in order to make way for his planned 90,000 square-foot ballroom, which will dwarf the 55,000 square-foot White House footprint.

“In order to do it properly,” Trump said, “we had to take down the existing structure.”

He said that the East Wing, which has served as offices for first ladies for nearly half a century, was “never thought of as being much” and that it made sense to demolish it “rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building.”

Trump also said the ballroom would cost $300 million, up from his initial claim of $200 million, and that it would be funded “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”

On Monday afternoon, Trump announced on Truth Social that ground had been broken on the project, which he said was “being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”

According to the White House, donors include Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir, Reynolds American and T-Mobile, as well as Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire Harold Hamm and the Winklevoss twins. It’s unclear how much money Trump himself is contributing to the effort.

“For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc.,” Trump wrote.

He added: “The East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete!”

‘It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.’

The East Wing demolition sparked fierce criticism from Democrats, who condemned the president for destroying a historic piece of the nation’s most iconic building and spending his time focusing on the ballroom project while the government is shut down.

“Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a $250 million golden ballroom for himself and his donors,” the Democratic Party wrote in a post on social media on Monday.

Others accused Trump of putting his own vanity above the needs of the country.

“Oh you’re trying to say the cost of living is skyrocketing? Donald Trump can’t hear you over the sound of bulldozers demolishing a wing of the White House to build a new grand ballroom,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote.

“The demolition of the East Wing feels very symbolic of what Trump is doing to our democracy. He’ll lie about protecting it, then destroy it right in front of your face,” wrote Sen. Mazie Hirono.

Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also weighed in. “It’s not his house. It’s your house,” Clinton wrote on X. “And he’s destroying it.” Onward Together, the political action committee Clinton founded, has already begun selling merchandise emblazoned with the phrase “Not His House. Our House.”

White House defends construction

The White House released a statement on Tuesday afternoon dismissing criticism of the construction as “manufactured outrage” from “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies.”

It called the ballroom a “bold, necessary addition that echoes the storied history of improvements and renovations from commanders-in-chief to keep the executive residence as a beacon of American excellence.”

Trump has said he envisioned the space resembling the ballroom at his private residence Mar-a-Lago. A name has not been announced, but ABC News reported that Trump is likely to name the ballroom after himself.

According to the White House, it will be able to seat 650 people — more than three times the 200-person seated capacity of the East Room. (On Monday, Trump said it would be able to hold “999” people.)

In July, the White House announced that construction on the project, which was then estimated to cost $200 million, would begin in September and was expected to be completed “long before the end of President Trump’s term.”

At the time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said that “nothing will be torn down.”

During a briefing Thursday, Leavitt defended the teardown.

“With any construction project, changes come,” Leavitt said. “The plans changed when the president heard counsel from the architects and the construction companies who said that in order for this East Wing to be modern and beautiful for many, many years to come, for it to be a truly strong and stable structure, this phase one that we’re now in was necessary.”

When was the East Wing built?

According to the White House archives, President Theodore Roosevelt built the East Terrace, which later became the East Wing, in 1902. The structure was expanded in 1942 to cover the construction of an underground bunker, now known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

The East Wing has been used by first ladies since 1977, when Rosalynn Carter established her offices there.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sent a letter urging the White House to “pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes.”

“While the National Trust acknowledges the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House, we are deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself,” Dr. Carol Quillen, the trust’s president, wrote in the letter.

Leavitt said Thursday that the White House intends to submit formal plans before construction of the ballroom gets underway, but insisted it was not required to do the same for the East Wing demolition.

The National Capital Planning Commission is required to review any external construction projects at the White House. The chairman of its 12-member board is Will Scharf, Trump’s staff secretary.

At a fundraising dinner earlier this month, Trump said he was told there were “zero zoning conditions” set for the ballroom construction project.

“I said, ‘How long will it take me?’” Trump said. “‘Sir, you can start tonight, you have no approvals.’ I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ They said, ‘Sir, this is the White House, you’re the president of the United States, you can do anything you want.’”

Treasury Department warns staff not to share photos

On Monday afternoon, jarring photo of heavy machinery ripping down parts of the East Wing, taken from the adjacent Treasury Department, was published by the Washington Post and shared widely on social media.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Treasury Department officials warned employees on Monday night not to take and share photos of the White House construction without permission.

A Treasury Department spokesperson told the Journal that “carelessly shared photographs of the White House complex could reveal sensitive items, potentially including security features or confidential structural details.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have urged our employees to avoid sharing these images,” the spokesperson added.

But photos of the demolition continued to circulate on social media.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, an outspoken Trump critic, posted one to his X account on Tuesday.