At a time when US President Donald Trump is laying literal waste to the East Wing of the White House, razing it to the ground with neither permission nor accountability, his cultural and historical vandalism has also been rampant in another sphere: on the building's very own website.
In their efforts to defend the President's decision to demolish the East Wing to make way for his so-called "ballroom" - a 90,000 square foot conference facility that, when completed, will be twice the size of the existing White House residence - a hasty makeover of WhiteHouse.gov has suddenly appeared.
In the process, they decided not only to justify Trump's refurbishment with false claims suggesting that "for 150 years, Presidents, Administrations and the White House staff have longed for a large event space" on the complex's grounds, but also opted to rewrite history and tarnish Trump's Democratic Party predecessors in the process.
In a "Major Events Timeline" that purports to illustrate White House construction projects dating back to 1791, former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are treated with nothing short of scorn and derision. The only reference to Clinton's eight years in office relates to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and what the website now refers to as his "Oval Office trysts". Obama is mentioned only in relation to his 2012 meeting with members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, accompanied by an image of America's 44th president wearing traditional robes and headgear when he visited his father's Kenyan birthplace in 2006.
Fast forward to Biden's single term in office, and Trump's immediate predecessor receives two separate mentions. The first focuses on the 2023 discovery by the Secret Service of a small bag of cocaine in the West Wing entrance lobby, and makes entirely unsubstantiated claims that Biden's son, Hunter, was responsible for it. The entry is accompanied by a compromising photograph of Hunter Biden, bare-chested in a bath during his time as a drug addict. The second attacks Biden's decision to host "Transgender Day of Visibility" at the White House on Easter Sunday last year, and is accompanied by a click-bait picture of a topless trans celebrant standing beneath the building's famous Truman balcony. Of Trump's stewardship of the complex, the website contains only hagiographic praise.
The timeline prompted fury among some Democrats. "Eight years of the Clinton presidency reduced to that? Eight years of the Obama presidency reduced to that? Four years of the Biden presidency reduced to that? Absurd", fumed one federal government worker in a text to The i Paper. "I'm sorry", wrote another, "but what the f**k?"
Of course, there is not much Trump enjoys more than trolling his opponents and riling them up. It requires commitment to find his Clinton, Obama and Biden online "Easter eggs", which are buried within a timeline that is not especially easy for a casual visitor to stumble across. But other attacks are as clear as day, including the text banner atop all White House website pages that falsely claims: "Democrats Have Shut Down The Government" and counts the number of days, minutes and hours that Washington has been at a standstill. (In fact, Republicans deserve equal culpability for the shutdown, since both parties have failed to pass compromise legislation that would secure the government's return to work).
The trolling continues within the White House itself. Portraits of all past occupants of the Oval Office line the famous West Wing colonnade, where foreign leaders often walk with their US counterpart. There, the portrait of Biden has been replaced by a picture of an autopen signing the former president's name, a reference to Trump's unsubstantiated claims that Biden himself was too frail to understand measures that were signed into law on his behalf.
Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton's official portrait was removed from a wall in the now-demolished East Wing and replaced with imagery of Trump's face overlaid with the American flag.
The President's cultural wrecking ball is also being unleashed on the museums of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where every single artefact is being "audited" to ensure it "aligns" with Trump's personal historical vision. Items considered "woke" are slated for removal from display, although for now the issue is moot, since visitors are barred from all the museums thanks to the government shutdown.
Trump's website rewrite illustrates that he has no intention of being bound by the normal rules of Washington's game. Comity and mutual respect among politicians are themselves becoming museum pieces, perhaps destined to be remembered in sepia, along with the demolished East Wing.