One dog barking: Trump's golden ballroom has friends at the Post
An occasional column by John Dineen
As we try to reckon with the rapid changes in our politics, so it goes with the coverage.
This past week, it was the Washington Post — yes, the same Washington Post that was the institutional hero of the successful effort to thwart the last rogue president — that was despoiling itself, for all to see.
As you may have heard, Donald Trump last week had the East Wing of the White House torn down, with plans for a parking-garage-sized, gilt-saturated ballroom. The reaction to this unilateral act was broadly, and predictably, one of outrage and lament at the loss of the nation’s heritage.
But not at the Post, whose editorial board offered us, “In defense of the White House ballroom,” with the subhead, “Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs.”
Margaret Sullivan minced no words in her Substack column, “The Washington Post shamelessly defends Trump’s odious ballroom.”
Sullivan mercilessly began with a roll call of the recent exodus of talent from the Post before getting down to the business at hand:
Over the last few months, the Washington Post opinion section has lost a lot — columnists Eugene Robinson, Catherine Rampell, Jennifer Rubin and Perry Bacon; political cartoonist Ann Telnaes, editors David Shipley, Karen Attiah and Ruth Marcus. It also lost many other outstanding journalists, like Erik Wemple, who either left the Post of their own accord or got the clear message that their work no longer “aligned” with the section’s new mission under a new editor.
That’s not all the Post has lost.
In an editorial published over the weekend, the Post’s editorial board made it clear it has also lost its way — continuing a downward trajectory you can trace back to owner Jeff Bezos’s decision last fall to yank an already drafted endorsement of Kamala Harris.
That was almost gentle, compared with the thorough flaying Gene Weingarten, formerly of the Post, administered, leaving no rock-headed thought in the editorial unturned — beginning with that headline and subhead:
No. The people objecting are not remotely NIMBYs, however you tweeze the term. NIMBY is a derogatory acronym about hypocrites, ones who might grudgingly accept the need for less-than-elegant social programs benefitting social goals — but selfishly demanding that it be nowhere near them. Whether you agree with Trump’s White House vision or not, the critics here are protesting what they see as an insult to the soul of the country, ostentation replicating monarchy. Obviously the objections here have nothing to do with physical proximity. It is heartfelt and selfless and noble in spirit. Whether or not you find it specious.
Weingarten then rolled his eyes at the editorial’s lede before pouncing on the second paragraph.
The Post wrote, “In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible.”
Weingarten was not having it:
Here we have the gist of the piece, laid out with admirable lack of equivocation. It’s a “reasonable idea,” they say. No, it isn’t. It’s a grotesque idea. The Post executive honchos who wrote this opinion or ordered others to write it should get out of their boardroom and start talking to actual people -- say, their own reporters and editors.
But they own the place and, by fiduciary entitlement, are allowed to infect on others their views, however leprous. That’s not the big deal here. The big deal is that what is about to spill out in nauseatingly self-revealing detail over the remainder of the editorial represents a bald-faced betrayal of readers. You will not be expressly told this, but Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who, with sharp elbows flying, is directing the paper’s opinions, is a major corporate contributor to the demolition project and the subsequent construction of a voluptuous gelt-gilded imperial ballroom. His Amazon is listed as one of the benefactors. This entire editorial opinion in The Post is not — cannot possibly be — objective and unbiased. The reader needs to know this, but isn’t told it. We’ll get back to this point later. It gets even more odious.
The Post later added at the bottom of the editorial that Amazon is a donor to the demolition and construction project, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Post.
But the Post’s failure to disclose a financial conflict was not an aberration. NPR’s David Folkenflik reported, “On at least three occasions in the past two weeks, an official Post editorial has taken on matters in which Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake. In each case, the Post’s official editorial line landed in sync with its owner’s financial interests.”
After these bracing critiques of the Post’s East Wing musings, it is tempting to call it a day. But I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge a different dissent from the “worse thing ever” reaction to the destruction: As Trump continues to order the U.S. military to attack boats in the Caribbean and Pacific with no legal justification, in the view of some, the White House teardown wasn’t even the most shocking news of the week.
As Tom Jones of Poynter wrote, recounting reader reaction to his initial take — “I don’t live in the White House or next door to it, so I don’t really care, especially because he reportedly isn’t using taxpayer money to fund it.” — was not favorable.
My overall point: There are way more things Trump is doing these days that are potentially more damaging to the country and our democracy than renovating the White House, especially if he’s not using public money.
That stance did not go over well with many Poynter Report readers.
No kidding, Tom.
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