Donald Trump is a real-estate developer and the President, the White House needed a ballroom. Stop the presses.

No, seriously. Stop.

President Donald Trump is renovating the East Wing of the White House. If any other president was doing it, the remodeling project would barely make the Sunday evening news.

Demolition is part of renovation, as anyone knows. Sure, the photos show a messy process. Does anyone really believe Trump intends to leave it like that?

Media outlets must be setting us up for the full-court press they are planning for the after photos. Right?

Or rather, they are teeing those images up for Donald Trump, once again, to humiliate their breathless, hyperbolic news coverage of a needed remodeling project — long overdue.

News outlets gushed over President Barack Obama’s renovation project during his term in office in 2010, after all. But as usual, we are to understand that Donald Trump is a different matter.

When Donald Trump does something, it’s always different.

Here is how major progressive media outlets treated the renovation as liberal Democrats invoked everything from Hitler to 9/11:

“Trump Wrecks America. His ‘Patriotic’ Fans Cheer. Is There Any Bottom?” — Michael Tomasky. The New Republic.

“East Wing of White House reduced to rubble as part of Trump’s ballroom construction.” — Maya Yang. The Guardian.

“A Pile of Rubble: After 123 Years, the East Wing Is Gone.” — Elisabeth Bumiller. The New York Times

“Donald Trump’s ‘let them eat cake’ moment,” D. Allan Kerr. Seacoast Online.

“Don’t even think of seeking the Democratic nomination for president unless you pledge to take a wrecking ball to the Trump Ballroom on DAY ONE,” wrote Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on X.

Sure, that’s totally normal.

The White House didn’t have a ballroom. Now, it will have one. Private donors are paying for it. What’s the problem, exactly?Aside from the fact that progressives don’t like Donald Trump?

This episode is following an all-too familiar pattern: Donald Trump does something that seems unnecessarily provocative to the left, and the left goes absolutely berserk over it, blotting out Trump’s actions with a hysterical nuclear overreaction.

The overreaction of left-leaning media outlets, Hollywood celebrities, and prominent progressives is what Trump was counting on. After almost 10 solid years of this treatment, Donald Trump knows how intensely progressives will overreact when he does something like remodel the East Wing of the White House.

He must be counting on it.

The left’s constant overreaction to Donald Trump makes his supporters dig in further into entrenched positions. It makes persuadable independent and undecided voters more sympathetic to him.

It makes the progressive left hate Trump more, but why would he care about that? He knows there is nothing — nothing — he could ever do that would get him invited back to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Progressives are never going to vote for him anyway, full stop.

But other voters might. His political opponents and media critics keep going after him and it just keeps helping him. It helps him in the polls. It helped him at the ballot box. It helps Republican Party polling. 

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s approval rating is terrible.

Trump building a ballroom at the White House isn’t going to change that.

Because, as usual, media outlets and progressive media personalities have jumped — with both feet — onto the latest world-ending scandal that is sure to end the presidency of Donald Trump.

It hasn’t worked yet. But you never know.

This particular episode has even the Washington Post defending Donald Trump.

“In defense of the White House ballroom,” ahemmed the editorial board of the Washington Post on Saturday, calling the kerfuffle “Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs.”

“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.

The State Dining Room seats 140. The East Room seats about 200. Trump says the ballroom at the center of his 90,000-square-foot addition will accommodate 999 guests. The next Democratic president will be happy to have this.” — The Washington Post editorial board. October 24, 2025.

“Trump joins a long list of presidents who have left their imprint on the White House,” concluded the WP sagely.

Other progressive media outlets might want to follow suit. This is a(nother) fight they aren’t going to win against Donald Trump.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)