New in PJ Media:
The Democrat outrage over President Donald Trump’s construction of White House ballroom is one of the sillier episodes in the ever-lengthening list of their efforts to smear and destroy him. Leftists are acting as if the White House has remained pristine and unchanged ever since it issued from the hallowed hands of George Washington himself (okay, they don’t mention Washington; it wouldn’t do to sully their narrative with mention of someone they think of only as a “racist slaveowner”). In reality, presidents throughout history, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have undertaken renovations at the White House, and no one minded. After all, they weren’t Donald Trump.
Now, however, Orange Man Bad once again has the temerity to fight back. At WhiteHouse.gov, which not too very long ago was the home of the Biden regime’s dispirited cadre of transcript cleaners, the Trump administration has just added a “Major Events Timeline” to its section on the White House, and it’s far, far more entertaining than you might expect.
The timeline starts out as a conventional history of the White House. The first entry is headed “Design Plans Commence,” and reads: “Our first president, George Washington, selected the site for the White House in 1791. The following year, the cornerstone was laid and a design submitted by Irish-born architect James Hoban was chosen. After eight years of construction, President John Adams and his wife Abigail moved into the still-unfinished residence.” No one could possibly object to that, except possibly those who would prefer that the note talk all about slavery and oppression instead. But for a capsule history of the White House building, it’s right on target.
After that we get just the sorts of things you’d expect: “Rebuilding after War of 1812,” “Addition of South Portico,” “Addition of North Portico,” “Addition of the West Wing,” and so on. The clear import of the timeline is to show that the White House has never been a static building, considered too sacrosanct to alter; on the contrary, it has changed quite extensively since John and Abigail lived there.
The timeline notes that there was no Oval Office in the White House until 1909, when “President William Howard Taft remodeled and expanded the West Wing, which included construction of the first Oval Office.” That’s a more consequential change than a ballroom in the East Wing, the sacred and unchangeable part of the White House that Trump is now daring to make the site of his ballroom. The East Wing itself, by the way, did not exist until 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt “constructed the East Wing for additional staff and wartime security, including a bomb shelter.”
There is more. Read the rest here.