Pearl clutching over ballroom wouldn’t be complete without a Joe and Mika meltdown

Adding to the echoes of outrage, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough lamented the “grotesque” renovations at the White House while claiming, “It’s history being torn to shreds.”

After relative silence on the tearing down of statues and monuments while activists besieged museums to deface irreplaceable works of art — not to mention their support for literal revisionist history through endeavors like the “1619 Project” — leftists have once again demonstrated how what they do is (D)ifferent compared to the bad, orange man.

So it was that the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” added their voices to the din of dissent against President Donald Trump’s East Wing Ballroom construction, calling it “painful” to witness.

“We’re very fortunate … this morning, in front of the facade of the White House that is not being obliterated as Donald Trump, who promised that he was not going to take a wrecking ball to the existing structure, has taken a wrecking ball to existing structure,” began Scarborough as he turned to his co-host and spouse, Mika Brzezinski.

“It’s hard to believe that any president could destroy the White House and take a wrecking ball to an existing structure so historic.” Morning Joe hosts stunned that Trump has literally taken a wrecking ball to the White House. pic.twitter.com/1oUy1S0ARq

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 21, 2025

“I’m going to say, Mika, it is hard to watch that. And it’s hard to believe that any president could destroy the White House and take a wrecking ball to an existing structure so historic,” he went on.

“That is what’s happening. It would be one thing if you were building on or you were doing things inside, but to take literally a wrecking ball to the White House — it’s grotesque. Just grotesque!”

In response, Brzezinski nodded to other gripes about updates to the White House, such as First Lady Melania Trump’s 2020 improvements to the Rose Garden that were followed by the president’s recent patio installation to better accommodate events that have drawn the ire of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

“Yeah. And this after the Rose Garden, and I guess the patio that they have put in. Which you could argue…” she said as Scarborough cut in, “Yeah, far different, yeah,” before she added, “But I mean, this is painful. I mean, this historic structure.”

Furthering his complaints, the co-host lamented, “It’s history being torn to shreds. And again, is everybody — I mean, so if somebody wants to go into the White House, the next person wants to just knock down all the walls and turn it into a disco, Congress can’t do anything? I mean, seriously, you’re destroying, like, one of the most historic structures on the planet.”

“And are we saying that whoever we elect president has the right to destroy? Like what, what? Just tear things up? Tear it to the ground, turn it into something else? Kind of crazy,” he argued before making the case, “… you rent it from the American people for four years.”

Missing from the lament was any context, such as the numerous alterations that the White House has undergone in the administrations prior to Trump, as well as the reality that the construction was not a unilateral decision by the president, but part of a collaborative effort with the National Park Service, the White House Military Office, and the United States Secret Service.

As the announcement of the project stated, “The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942.”

https://t.co/gmRDau53sB

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 21, 2025

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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