Donald Trump’s decision to reduce a major chunk of the White House to rubble is shocking, but not surprising. Shocking, because no other occupant of “The People’s House” ever treated it as if it belonged to him; but not surprising, because the Trump family has a long history of desecrating landmarks.
Trump learned everything he knows about real estate from his father, Fred Trump—and much of what he knows about wanton vandalism. Steeplechase Park was one of the most beloved amusement parks in Coney Island, Brooklyn. In 1966, after Trump’s dad acquired the property (accompanied by nineteen-year-old Donald at the signing ceremony), with plans to demolish it and build residential units, outraged citizens attempted to save it by applying to have it designated as a landmark.
Before Steeplechase’s landmark status could be certified, however, Fred Trump organized a “demolition party” at which he urged a mob to smash the glass facade of the park’s Pavilion of Fun. “Trump sent out engraved invitations and invited people to throw rocks and bricks through the Funny Face—it was a desecration of an icon, it was insane,” Charles Denson, the Coney Island History Project’s executive director, told the Brooklyn Paper. “Most developers are worried about making a profit, most wouldn’t throw a party to desecrate a stained-glass window.”
Donald Trump would continue his father’s proud tradition of gleeful destruction when he demolished the Bonwit Teller Building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to clear the site for Trump Tower. After saying he’d try to preserve the building’s priceless Art Deco friezes so that they could be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trump discovered that it would cost $32,000 to remove them intact. As a clever solution to his problem, he had his workmen smash them to bits.
The trashing of the Bonwit friezes, as reprehensible as it was, is nothing compared to Trump’s most ambitious act of architectural desecration: the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the January 6 assault resulted in property damage totaling $2.7 billion, a cost to be borne by American taxpayers.
Having taken a wrecking ball to the buildings housing two branches of government, one wonders if Trump’s next renovation project will involve destroying the Supreme Court. But John Roberts is already hard at work on that.
A serious post today! But it seemed appropriate. I covered this (and a lot more) here: https://bookshop.org/a/109008/9781668003893
I am struggling to find one human quality in Trump. Nada.