House GOP defends White House bulldozing in attack on Hillary Clinton

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee went on the attack Tuesday in defense of the Trump administration’s bulldozing of the White House’s East Wing, specifically targeting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Demolition on the White House’s East Wing began on Monday as part of President Donald Trump’s plans to construct a $200 million ballroom. Images and video were captured of a bulldozer tearing down the East Wing, which was erected in 1942 under the Roosevelt administration.

“It’s not his house,” Clinton wrote in a social media post on X Tuesday in response to reports of the East Wing’s demolition. “It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.”

The official X account for Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), responded to Clinton’s remarks by stating, “It’s certainly not your house.”

For over a decade, Trump has advocated for the addition of a luxurious event space to the White House complex, and in August, his administration awarded a $200 million contract to a Maryland-based contractor to fulfill that ambition.

Critics, however, have condemned the demolition of the East Wing, with one expert arguing that it was indicative that Trump has no intentions of leaving the White House after the end of his second term in early 2029. The blowback has been so fierce that the Treasury Department has instructed staff not to share photos of the demolition, according to internal emails revealed Tuesday.

The ballroom is planned to be 90,000 square feet and be decorated with gold inlays and a checkered marble floor, seat up to 650 people, and be completed by the end of Trump’s second term. Trump has said the project would be funded entirely by Trump himself and “other patriot donors.”