I just did a Google Maps measurement of the White House grounds [View all]
We are told that Trump wants to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom and that he needed to remove the East Wing of the White House to get it in there.
According to Google Maps, it's only 150 feet from where the west wall of the East Wing used to stand to the fenceline encasing the White House property. Security considerations preclude taking the building all the way to the fence, so we'll say the ballroom can be no more than 100 feet wide. 90,000/100 = 900 feet long. If you start at the northern wall of the former East Wing, 900 feet lands your southern wall in the middle of E Street. The logical place to put this ballroom would have been below-grade on the north side of the White House - the fancy part that all the tourists want to see is on the south side - and by doing so, no demolition would have been required.
The question I'm starting to ask myself is, is Trump really planning to build a ballroom or did he just rip one end off the White House to be a vindictive dickhead?
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