Trump’s ballroom blitz and burnin’ down the house

Before the orange cyclone hit town, Washington was a far more staid place.

- Maureen Dowd

Al Gore loved to host small dinner parties focused on scholarly topics. One dinner was devoted to the meaning of metaphor. “I|-ii-ke metaphors,” Mr Gore drawled to The Washington Post when he was vice president. “The more complex and arcane the better.”

What must Mr Gore make of the unsanctioned, ahistoric, abominable destruction of the East Wing by Donald Trump? It’s the most remarkable metaphor we've ever seen in the nation’s capital. It’s not complex or arcane. It’s simple and visceral. It slams you in the face — metaphorically speaking.

“He’s saying, ‘Ican do whatever the hell I want and you can’t stop me!” said David Axelrod, who worked in the Obama White House. “In this case, it's sundering history.

“If you worked in the White House, you have a reverence for every wall of that place. Tattered as it may have been, there was a dignity to it. It was a quietly stately citadel of power in America, not a palace for a mad king. Trump has a manic desire to tear down history and write his own.”

A Jackie Kennedy garden was ploughed over by the bulldozers. The woman with the best taste in the history of the White House was rubbished by the man with the worst taste in the history of the White House.

Many of his voters wanted to see Mr Trump take a jackhammer to Washington, but I’m not sure they meant it this literally.

Melania probably doesn’t care. As The New York Times’ Katie Rogers reported in her book about first ladies, American Woman, Melania only dropped by the East Wing, which held the offices for the first lady and her staff, a couple of times in the first term. She hasn't been around much this term either.