If there is one thing happening in the White House after Susie Wiles gets wind of this breaking feature piece from CNN, it will be Wiles using every ounce of influence that she has on any level with anybody in Trump world to get Mad King Donald to stand down and not go on the attack after Patti Davis. Davis, one of the children of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, poured out her heart and soul tonight and she sounds like a great many Americans — particularly those of us who believed Trump wouldn’t touch the East Wing and then he ripped out the entire structure.
Davis saw the structure in a much more up close and personal way than most of us. But still and all, the White House is a building standing since 1792. Part of it is gone, now. Gone the way historical buildings are destroyed in a war, or in a fire. Simply gone. A piece of history has been ripped away from us. And why? Because a vain and stupid man, with no concept of history or tradition, decided that he had a better idea than preserving the history of this nation. His idea is some cheap, brassy, gee gaw, carnival-level edifice of some sort.
I think it was a good touch for CNN to put in the now-famous scene of John Travolta dancing with then-Princess Diana. The White House had enough room for ballroom dancing that night. You don’t need 90,000 square feet for one good dancer to twirl another one around the floor.
Charlie Pierce describes the last time that the White House was under attack.
On August 24, 1814, the United States was once again at war with the British empire. Having finished off Napoleon—for the first time, but not for good—Great Britain was ready to field the first team against the fledgling American republic, the armed forces of which were practically embryonic. Nonetheless, on that date, American general William Winder deployed his troops, which were composed of largely untried militia units, along a bridge over the Anacostia River in Bladensburg, Maryland, to defend the road leading to Washington, the new country’s new capital city.
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Winder faced veteran British troops commanded by General Robert Ross, all of them fresh off the battlefields of Europe. The British routed the troops manning the bridge, collapsed the left flank of the American position, and drove the Americans into a headlong flight from the field. Winder had not devised a plan for orderly withdrawal, resulting in a pell-mell retreat that became infamous in history as “The Bladensburg Races.”
The road to Washington was now wide open, so the members of the government had joined the Races out of town. To his credit, President James Madison paused in flight and took command of an American battery at Bladensburg, making him the only sitting president of the United States to command troops in actual combat. Washington, however, fell into panic as the British approached. First Lady Dolley Madison, in the middle of preparing a formal dinner in what was then called the Presidential Mansion, asked a slave named Paul Jennings to save a famous portrait of George Washington.
The British entered the city and the Royal Marines under Admiral George Cockburn seized the Presidential Mansion, sat down and ate Mrs. Madison’s fancy dinner, and then set the place ablaze. The British also burned the Capitol and the Treasury Department. A torrential downpour put out the flames, but then a tornado knocked down much of what had been left standing. It was not a good week for America.
However, the destruction wrought by the British on the American capital galvanized the country behind the war. Rebuilding Washington became a national priority. And James Hoban, the Irish emigre who’d designed the original presidential mansion, which he modeled after Leinster House in Dublin, was called back to rebuild the president’s residence. It had taken Hoban and his crew, which included at least three slaves, almost ten years to build the first mansion. The rebuild took only three, and, by 1817, President James Monroe was able to move in. The same lime-based whitewash, meant to protect the delicate Aquia sandstone exterior, was used and the new mansion became known colloquially as the “White House.” In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt made it official. Presidents now would live in a building called the White House.
Since the British left town two steps ahead of the tornado in 1814, it had been inviolate. The Trumans moved out, briefly, so the inside could be extensively renovated. (The leg of First Daughter Margaret Truman’s piano fell through the floor, indicating that the renovation was overdue.) It has never been clear whether, on September 11, 2001, the doomed Flight 93 was aimed at the White House or the Capitol, the latter of which would have been a much easier target. But, if the White House had been the target, that would have been the first attack on it since Admiral Cockburn stopped by.
Until this week, when President Donald Trump brought in the bulldozers.
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The Peoples’ House survived a war but not Donald Trump. Yes, that does seem to be the way of things.
The only thing that would set this right is if the next Democratic president who gets in office demolishes the ballroom and attempts to set up some kind of imitation of what the East Wing used to be.
Or, maybe that would be throwing good money after bad. Maybe the way to handle this is just close the structure down and let it gather dust and moss as a grim reminder of the kind of power that Trump had and how he cavalierly threw it around and wasted the nation’s time and money — and all for some silly ego game.
If Trump has a lick of sense he’ll leave this one alone. But he doesn’t have a lick of sense and so he very well might attack Patti Davis. And that is going to get him the same kind of reaction that Kari Lake got when she attacked John McCain. It’s not a good idea to go after Reagan’s daughter. But Trump is stupid enough to do so.
And anybody want to lay odds that Mike Johnson, when asked about this, will have no idea what’s being talked about?
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Demolition of the carbuncle and reinstatement of the previous wing is the only option.
And a complete and total exorcism overseen by leaders of all faiths and religious traditions excepting the obnoxious (and noxious) evangelical prosperity gospel grifters (every one of whom should be presented with notices that they will be audited for the last quarter century of their personal AND business situations) to rid the premises of the demonic spirits (and non-metaphorical stench) left by Drumpf.