Former President Ronald Reagan’s daughter has slammed President Donald Trump’s “heartbreaking” demolition of the White House’s East Wing.
Patti Davis, 73, mourned the East Wing in a New York Times opinion essay published Friday. Photos circulated online this week showing the extensive building work, which is being carried out to make room for Trump’s long-awaited $300 million ballroom. The East Wing stood for more than 100 years before it was destroyed this week.
“The images we’ve now all seen of the East Wing being demolished are heartbreaking,” Davis wrote. “Over the centuries, many presidents have altered the White House, and certainly older buildings need to be updated and repaired. But this is complete destruction.”
Davis said the East Wing “was not just a building made of brick and plaster; it was the people’s house, a building suffused with the spirit of the ideals that built it.” The building “invited you to look beyond your own life,” she argued.
“Now no one else will get to walk across that threshold and feel the richness of that history brush past them,” Davis wrote. “It was where Eleanor Roosevelt walked. It was where Jacqueline Kennedy planned the Rose Garden.”
She concluded: “We silence so much when we tear down places that are there to teach us, inspire us, humble us. Ghosts and memories drift away in the dust, the wreckage, and we are all poorer as a result.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The Independent the renovations will benefit future generations.
“President Trump is working 24/7 to Make America Great Again, including his historic beautification of the White House, at no taxpayer expense,” Ingle wrote in a statement. “These long-needed upgrades will benefit generations of future presidents and American visitors to the People’s House – something we should all celebrate.”
This comes a day after the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation criticized the government of Ontario, Canada, over an advertisement it said “misrepresents” a speech the former president gave in 1987. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, shared the advertisement online last week, writing that “Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.”
The ad includes soundbites of Reagan criticizing tariffs, which have been widely implemented by the Trump administration. The advertisement does not alter the words Reagan said, but it does change the order he said them in, according to a BBC analysis of the speech.
Trump shared the foundation’s statement on Truth Social and said he’ll be terminating all trade negotiations with Canada, citing “their egregious behavior.”
When contacted for comment, Ford’s office directed The Independent to the Premier’s recent post on X, which included a link to Reagan’s address.
“Canada and the United States are friends, neighbours and allies,” Ford wrote on Friday morning. “President Ronald Reagan knew that we are stronger together. God bless Canada and God bless the United States.”
Ford later announced that Ontario will “pause its U.S. advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume.”
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