Most First Ladies Remain Mum on the Demolished East Wing
As renovation moves ahead, Jill Biden staffers speak of the loss and the former first lady’s dedication to working in the East Wing.
It’s been four days since alarming images of heavy machinery tearing down the White House East Wing facade on Monday screamed across social media and news platforms. In the hours that have since passed there has been a notable silence. The public has yet to hear from First Lady Melania Trump or her predecessors—former First Ladies Dr. Jill Biden, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush—about the loss of their historic workplace.
That, however, was not the case for Secretary Hillary Clinton, who served as first lady alongside her husband former President Bill Clinton for two terms (1993-2001), who took to X within hours of the initial images surfacing saying:
“It’s not his house.
It’s your house.
And he’s destroying it.”
And later Thursday evening Clinton wrote on X:
“The government may be shut down, but Trump is still managing to get some work done in Washington—like illegally demolishing an entire wing of the White House to build himself a ball room.
Lifting a finger to lower your health care costs? Not so much.”
While the White House contends the tear down was legal, Clinton’s comments have garnered millions of views and tens of thousands likes as information surrounding what ended up being the ill-fated, historic East Wing continues to evolve. On Wednesday, President Trump confirmed the entire East Wing is being torn down, saying of the space, “It was never thought of as being much … It was a very small building,” The New York Times reported. The building could be completely torn down as soon as this weekend.
Those comments by Mr. Trump clashed with an earlier statement he made when the White House Ballroom was announced in late July. He said at the time that the construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that could seat 900 would not impact the White House building.
“It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it,” he said. “And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
One White House official reportedly said tearing down the structure would be more cost effective than building an addition. And, early estimates that the construction would cost $200 million have since ballooned to $300 million, a sum that the White House says is being privately funded by him and donors, not taxpayers.
First Lady Melania Trump has not spoken out about the White House Ballroom or the demolition to the East Wing. But, on Tuesday she posted a video on social media about her “Be Best” Emerging Technology initiative featuring teens from the Snap Council for Digital Well-Being.
“Our children—and their future—demand our attention. Congress made a significant initial step forward by passing the Take it Down Act, however, technology is advancing at a pace that exceeds our imagination. New tech tools will bring extraordinary potential—and unprecedented risks,” Mrs. Trump said. “Be observant, curious, and continue to learn.”
In examining the first ladies’s lack of response to date, Katherine A.S. Sibley, professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University and author of U.S. first ladies books Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History (2021); A Companion to First Ladies (2016); First Lady Florence Harding: Behind the Tragedy and Controversy (2009), tells East Wing Magazine Thursday that she believes Melania Trump cares little for the office and its platform, except for the occasional parachuting in.
“She does not seem to have developed a close connection with the Office of First Lady, and the opportunities to make the world a better place that it offers, in the same way that her predecessors have,” Sibley says. “Over the past nine months since the inauguration, her presence in the East Wing has been limited; perhaps one (to) three visits a month. It’s not a priority, and her lack of commentary at the bulldozing of her own office speaks volumes about that.”
Sibley wishes the other first ladies, besides Hillary Clinton, would speak up, too.
“It’s likely they have imagined they will have little effect, and they are doubtless correct—still, the American people would be surely uplifted upon hearing these women’s protest at this erasure of a site that is so identified with their legacy to the nation,” Sibley says. “Perhaps these first ladies are taking comfort in the fact that the White House Historical Association has catalogued and digitized the building’s contents, and collected its artifacts, for which we are all grateful. But the gap that remains cannot be filled by a digitized rendition.”
Earlier today, Substack newsletter author Katie Harbath of Anchor Change posted an aerial photo of the East Wing demolition on social media saying, “Picture of the White House East Wing demolition taken on my flight out of DCA.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing on Thursday fielding questions about the East Wing demolition. It was noted that the reason the White House didn’t submit construction plans to the National Capital Planning Commission is because that commission, along with others, don’t have oversight over demolitions, but only over construction.
When asked if the president can tear down anything he wants without oversight, Leavitt explained it’s not the president who came up with that legal opinion.
“That’s a legal opinion that’s been held by the NCPC for many years,” Leavitt says. “Their general counsel has said when it comes to phase one of this project, the tearing down of the current East Wing structure, a submission is not required legally for that. Only for vertical construction will a submission be required.”
That characterization has also been described as a loophole in the more broader oversight process.
The silence from first ladies to date, however, also didn’t surprise one of the East Wing’s more recent occupants, Michael LaRosa, press secretary to former First Lady Jill Biden from 2021 to 2022.
“It’s not in Jill’s nature to react to the news of the day, politics, or anything related to the Trump White House,” LaRosa tells East Wing Magazine in an email. “She has a very full life, a large family of children, grandchildren, and a great grandchild as well as a husband going through treatment for cancer. She spent a lot of time in the East Wing, but it’s not in her style to be critical of Mrs. Trump and the choices of her predecessors or successors.”
As a former member of the Senate Spouses Club for nearly four decades, LaRosa explains, there were unwritten rules of political civility she absorbed over time that guide and inform her public reactions to events, especially when it involves decisions made by another political spouse and in this case her predecessor and successor.
When asked what he thought might be going through his former boss’ mind, LaRosa says:
“I’m sure she’s personally disgusted. But she doesn’t think of herself as an activist or politician, so I can’t imagine she has any desire to stir the pot by issuing a public statement of criticism on this.”
Another former Jill Biden staffer couldn’t speculate about what the former first lady must be thinking, but did share with East Wing Magazine her own sense of loss.
“The images of the East Wing being demolished are shocking—our collective American history erased and bulldozed. I’m saddened not just as a former staffer who worked in the East Wing, but as an American,” says Vanessa Valdivia, former special assistant to the president and press secretary to the first lady. “This brazen project has also effectively closed the doors of the White House to the public, with no White House tours for months. We always knew that we were temporary occupants, tasked with the responsibility of both preserving history and expanding accessibility to the People’s House. It’s truly a loss and a disrespect for the rich history of the first ladies who worked in the East Wing from Eleanor Roosevelt to Jill Biden.”
And while LaRosa added that he’s heard from several former colleagues from Dr. Biden’s team who would like her to speak up, he says it’s not in her nature or style to publicly criticize Mrs. Trump or the stylistic choices of the Trumps. He describes Dr. Biden as a tough and relentless campaigner, but the campaigns are over and she isn’t one to revisit her past.
“She might not forget, but she does move on,” he says, adding it would, indeed, surprise him if she came out swinging on this matter. “Most Democrats feel [they] are very much in this situation today because of the decisions the Bidens’ and the people around them made and I’m not sure it would be wise or helpful to her or her husband if she spoke out on this.”
On several occasions, during planning discussions at Camp David, Dr. Biden’s Chief of Staff Anthony Bernal proposed moving the First Lady’s Office and the staff space out of the East Wing and over to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, LaRosa says. An idea that apparently remained a proposal because unlike the patterns of some first ladies, notes LaRosa, Dr. Biden used her East Wing office every day.
Each first lady uses the East Wing differently, LaRosa explains. Hillary Clinton had her social secretary and some aides in the East Wing. Clinton and her chief of staff occupied space on the second floor of the West Wing and the rest of her staff worked from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Mrs. Obama spent more time in the East Wing, Sibley says, noting she executed “major initiatives from there and many events there; it was her office.” LaRosa says Mrs. Obama often preferred work from a desk inside the private living quarters on the third floor of the mansion.
“Mrs. Trump, during her first term as first lady, rarely stepped foot in the East Wing, according to reports in the news and from what I heard from permanent staff at the White House while I worked there,” LaRosa says.
Dr. Biden’s use of her East Wing office was in sharp contrast to Mrs. Trump use. Even on days when Dr. Biden taught locally at Northern Virginia Community College while serving as first lady, she always arrived back to her East Wing office by 2:30 p.m. or 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursdays, LaRosa recalls during his time at the White House.
“Other days she would start her day off in the East Wing just like the rest of us. She often brought Willow with her, on her back in the cat-backpack I bought from Amazon, before Willow got to the White House,” he says. “When we were not traveling the country or the world, she worked, was briefed, and hosted meetings every day from that office.”
LaRosa goes on to share that Dr. Biden had the office renovated to suit her more nautical style describing the first lady’s office renovation as a “remarkable redesign molded in the style and taste of Jill Biden.”
Questions about the future of the Office of the First Lady still remain, but Leavitt in the press briefing hinted that there would, indeed, be a future East Wing.
“In due time, the East Wing is going to be more beautiful and modern than ever before. And in addition, there will be a big, beautiful ballroom that can hold big parties and state visits for generations to come.”
If this week’s history tells us anything, it’s that only time will tell.
East Wing Magazine is interested in your experiences at the White House East Wing. If you have a photo you’d like to share for publication, identify the people in the photo (first name only is fine) and where you’re from. Send it to jtaylor@eastwingmagazine.com.