Trump has been humbled over his pet project. Even when he’s right, his obsession hurts him

August 9, 2026 — 2:10pm

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For all the legal cases involving Donald Trump’s decisions as US president, the saga of his renovations to the White House is among the most ridiculous.

A three-judge panel of the second most important court in the country halted construction on Trump’s White House renovations, forcing him to take the matter to the Supreme Court if he wants to complete his pet project.

The Court of Appeals found that Trump was merely a tenant of the White House, no more permitted to demolish a wing of the building than I am to knock down a wall in my rented apartment. We can both make aesthetic changes, but anything permanent must be approved by the owner. In Trump’s case, the owner is the American people, which means Congress gets a say.

That distinction between occupying a place and owning it is one Trump has spent much of his second presidential term testing.

The renovation project began with Trump unilaterally demolishing the 123-year-old East Wing for a new, privately financed and gilded ballroom. As outrage grew about his destruction of a piece of American history, his justification shifted toward that of national security, and improvements to the underground bunker housing the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre.

As a real estate mogul, Trump could control the aesthetics even when he did not own the underlying asset: his name in gold letters on buildings for which he accepted little financial responsibility. He did the same thing with his crypto........

© WA Today