ROOKE: The Real Reason Trump Renovating White House Buried Underground

Democrats, with help from their media cronies, have found a new way to claim that President Donald Trump is attacking democracy and destroying norms with the latest updates to the White House.

In their fervor to paint Trump as the villain, they are overlooking one of the primary reasons the East Wing annex is getting a makeover, and it likely has little to do with the White House State Ballroom.

A little-known or under-discussed fact about the presidential ballroom being constructed at the White House is what’s located beneath the East Wing annex: the main underground presidential bunker, known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC).

The PEOC was built under the East Wing of the White House in 1942 during World War II, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The East Wing annex, designed by architect Lorenzo Winslow, was remodeled to conceal the bunker and provide additional office space for the White House to conduct wartime meetings. Today, it acts as additional office space and a central location for planning parties, state dinners, and other events.

The media is clinging to the construction of the ballroom, painting it as a symbol of Trump acting like a pre-French Revolution monarch. It’s extremely likely that the White House is using the demolition of the East Wing Annex, in preparation for the new ballroom, as the perfect opportunity to install a state-of-the-art presidential bunker.

While the White House has kept the bunker’s security measures classified, it has been over 80 years since the bunker underwent a full remodel, making the security measures likely obsolete. Still, Trump mentioned in a press conference Wednesday that the White House and the U.S. Military are working closely together on the new construction project. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)

“We’re also working with the military on it because they want to make sure everything is perfect, and the military is very much involved in this, and they want to make sure everything is beautiful,” Trump said.

Additionally, the Treasury Department instructed employees not to share photos of the East Wing demolition.

“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote Monday evening in an email to department employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The official reportedly claimed that these photos could “potentially reveal sensitive items, including security features or confidential structural details.”

Back in July, the White House announced that the ballroom addition included “security enhancements and modifications, adding that the U.S. Secret Service will be providing the necessary changes. Official statements, including those from Trump, frame the military’s and Secret Service’s roles as simply a way to ensure precision and aesthetic quality in the ballroom project itself.

If this story is really just about giving the White House a much-needed ballroom to host state dinners and other important functions, it’s beyond time that American presidents have more than just a high school graduation-style pop-up tent available for use.

The American taxpayer is not funding the remodel, and yet its use will be available for hosting important events for decades, if not centuries. We should be celebrating this. American presidents need to show strength when foreign leaders visit. We are not, and have never been, a second-class country, and our leaders need a proper platform to showcase our power. The White House State Ballroom will be the perfect place for this.

And if it is a red herring to update the bunker, it gives us even more reason to celebrate its construction, which will likely continue until the end of Trump’s term, making it a gift he’s giving to future presidents, not himself.

Still, it wouldn’t matter if Trump came out and said that the presidential bunker needs security upgrades. The media apparatus, which works as the propaganda arm for the left, will find a way to paint Trump as an evil villain. They ignore the history of past presidents changing the White House’s structure because it’s easy to attack Trump if they can claim this is another instance that makes him seem like a disrespectful tyrant. (RELATED: Trump And Obama Spearhead Two Massive Construction Projects And They Couldn’t Be Any More Different)

These same people cheered as the left tore down historical statues and attacked federal buildings, but now want to feign outrage over what will be a much-needed and beautiful addition to the White House.

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