The Media Research Center’s rage that President Trump’s destructive White House ballroom project was criticized continued in the Oct. 21 hate-watch of “The Vew” by Nicholas Fondacaro:
Someone apparently taught the liberal ladies of The View a new vocabulary word overnight because they kept throwing around the word “nihilist” to describe President Trump during Tuesday’s episode. The cast was up in arms about the construction of the White House’s new ballroom; claiming that it was evidence that Trump thinks “he is a king” and a “one-man wrecking ball” with “no purpose other than an impulse to destroy” (it’s unclear how that squared with building something new).
“It’s a very bad look right now to be building and demolishing and all this gold tacky crap that he loves!” shouted co-host Joy Behar. She also described Trump as a “one-man wrecking ball.”
[…]They even had a problem with the ballroom being built without taxpayer funds. “A ballroom is a symbol of excess and opulence,” pretend independent Sara Haines bellyached. “And this was like a wealthy ballroom paid for by wealthy people for wealthy people to come and dance in a ballroom. And like I know this was price funds. But I can’t help but imagine how far $250 million could go for families can’t put food on their table.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin, who experiences chronic racial grievance, tried to cope with the ballroom by throwing as many insults at it as she possibly could. “That’s what struck me, the $250 million project. And it’s going to be tacky and gaudy…this tacky gaudy nasty ballroom,” she proclaimed.
[…]The ballroom really triggered moderator Whoopi Goldberg, who kicked off their conversation by angrily shouting, “That is not your building! You don’t own that building! … You don’t own that building! That is the people’s building! [Claps her hands together] You don’t own it!” She dabbled in a little false equivalency by suggesting it was like her going to Trump Tower and installing a disco.
Fondacaro offered no proof that this wasn’t the case.
Curtis Houck lashed out at an actor he doesn’t personally like — whom he dismissed as a “kooky leftist actor” — in an Oct. 24 post:
Far-left actor Bradley Whitford closed out Friday’s Inside Politics by discussing with CNN host Dana Bash his role on the new season of Netflix’s The Diplomat, but Bash also asked about the East Wing demolition given his role on the left’s dearly beloved work of fan fiction, The West Wing.
Unsurprisingly, Whitford acted as one would expect given his beloved status among the perpetual theatre kid class on the left and called it “heartbreaking” a “corrupt authoritarian” President would do this to distract from the government shutdown, the Epstein Files, and what he claimed is a porous economy.
Houck then offered what he considered a sufficient rebuttal:
Earlier this week, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) had the perfect reaction to these kinds of meltdowns by telling reporters it’s been bizarre to see liberals suddenly care about our country’s monuments and statues after years of demanding they be ripped down because they’re relics of, say, the patriarchy, slavery, or white supremacy.
Why shouldn’t those statues and monuments have been removed for those reasons? Houck didn’t explain, or why he thought Hawley’s hateful reaction was “perfect.”
P.J. Gladnick whined in an Oct. 28 post:
New Yorker magazine has an amusing analysis by art writer Adam Gopnik as to why President Donald Trump tore down the East Wing in order to build a new ballroom next to the White House. The supposed reason gives us insight into just how much corrosive TDS has eaten away at anything resembling rational thought at that periodical.
You can descend into the New Yorker rabbit hole in their bizarre screed published on Saturday in “Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing.” The subtitle lays out the dopey thesis: “The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat.”
[…]You would think that the East Wing is some iconic architectural marvel marvel ranking right up there with the Alhambra, Eiffel Tower, and the Lincoln Memorial. However, even Gopnik soon admits that the East Wing has been somewhat unimpressive in its relatively brief life which amounts to less than a third of the age of the nation:
Why must the East Wing be an “architectrual marvel” when it had not been before? Gladnick fails to explain. Instead, he whined that Trump’s snap judgment was questioned:
Gopnik seems to think that Trump should have patiently waited for the long Byzantine process of bureaucratic review to play itself out. A process which in this era could take many, many years — long after Trump’s “arbitrary power” is gone.
Why shouldn’t Trump go through such a review? Again, Gladnick fails to explain beyond his implicit “because Trump said so, that’s why!”
Tim Graham grumbled — along with Houck and Fondacaro — in his Oct. 28 podcast:
The networks and newspapers hyperventilating over President Trump as a “one-man wrecking ball” who okayed demolition of the East Wing of the White House to build a new ballroom is the silliest Trump scandal imaginable. He’s a “mob boss” who may “never leave” office, and his architectural plans betray “a darker history in fascist and totalitarian politics.”
Managing Editor Curtis Houck and Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro explain our latest work on this ludicrous horror movie the media elites are inventing.
Graham apparently didn’t explain why someone who willfully demolished an entire wing of the White House shouldn’t face criticiwsm for that decision.
Graham followed up with his Oct. 29 column more forcefully whining that Trump’s ballroom got criticized:
The silliest Trump scandal imaginable is the forthcoming White House ballroom, funded entirely by private donations. If everything is a scandal, is nothing a scandal? Anything that feeds President Trump’s ego must be denounced no matter how much it serves a larger public purpose.
Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott uncorked a typical piece of anti-Trump agita on October 24, headlined: “Why the demolition of the East Wing is so shocking: The speed of destruction, and the projection of power, are part of the strongman playbook.”
Journalists find fascist parallels in seemingly everything Trump touches. Kennicott wrote that images of leaders looking over architectural plans is a trope of “political iconography” by elected leaders. But he found an echo in an expert: “Columbia University professor Barry Bergdoll pointed out in a speech at the National Building Museum on Wednesday, the public display of the architectural model has a darker history in fascist and totalitarian politics, as well.”
Graham made no effort to explain why Trump’s ballroom must be held above criticism, or why anyone who does must be denigrated.
The MRC’s nepo-baby chief, David Bozell, made a Nov. 1 appearance on the radio show of fellow right-winger Derek Hunter:
Bozell also slammed the media’s overblown reaction to the White House East Wing renovations, which are largely focused on the new ballroom. He called out NBC’s Maria Shriver, noting it’s unclear if she’s ever even entered the East Wing. “I promise you, too, that Maria Shriver has never taken the public entrance to the White House. She’s gone in through the gate…So she has never probably even entered the East Wing,” he said, highlighting how journalists continue to portray the updates as catastrophic.
Given that Trump demolished the entire East Wing — which is not mere “renovations,” as Bozell would like us to believe — there’s no reason why he shouldn’t face criticism for his approach and that to do so is not “overblown.”
Jorge Bonilla kept up the MRC’s ballroom obsession in a Nov. 18 post by Jorge Bonilla:
Right on cue, as the last embers of the government shutdown fade away and the Epstein Files matter appears to come to a conclusion with a vote on the House floor, the most viscerally anti-Trump of the Elitist Media nightly newscasts reverts to an old reliable story. Like a dog returning to its vomit, ABC World News Tonight returns to reporting White House ballroom brain rot.
Bonilla didn’t explain why his being so obsessed by the ballroom that he felt the need to devote a post to it nearly a month after the story broke didn’t also qualify. Instead, he played whataboutism:
The brief serves no purpose other than to further inflame the viewer against the President of the United States. And it is as inane as it is brief. “Workers are now making room for President Trump’s $300 million ballroom”, Muir says, as if there were the possibility that the space might instead be repurposed for a parking lot or an amphitheater.
Among the stories omitted in order to accommodate this slop: Stacey Plaskett being coached by Jeffrey Epstein during the Michael Cohen hearings, Trump shooter Thomas Crooks alleged to be a they/them furry, and the United Nations Security council voting to adopt Trump’s 20-step Gaza peace plan. Instead, ABC runs ballroom voyerism from atop the Washington Monument.
Recall that Bonilla dismissed the ballroom story as a “local zoning dispute,” and the poor guy can’t understand why the destruction of a historically significant building is a story at all. Rather, he dismissed it again as “Trump-deranged Elitist Media run brain rot.”