President Donald Trump finally admitted Wednesday afternoon that he was demolishing the East Wing because it never impressed him.

Trump had originally claimed that the 83-year-old building wouldn’t be touched in the construction of the $250 million privately funded ballroom. 

But when a backhoe was pictured on Monday smashing through the walls of the historic building, it set off alarm bells.

‘It was never thought of as being much,’ Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, when asked why the demolition occurred. 

He said the second-story, which was added on to accommodate the offices of the first lady, ‘was not particularly nice.’   

‘We determined that, after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that really knocking it down – trying to use a little section,’ he said, was the best course of action. 

Trump swatted back when a reporter asked for his response to criticism that the White House hadn’t been transparent that the whole building was coming down.

‘I haven’t been transparent about this? Really? I’ve shown this to everybody that would listen,’ the president said. ‘Third-rate reporters didn’t see it because they didn’t look, you’re a third-rate reporter.’ 

The president held up pictures of the ornate ballroom during the meeting and a model of how the White House complex will look once the new wing was completed sat out on the table. 

‘In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,’ the president explained inside the Oval Office on Wednesday as he hit out at the photos that were released of the demolition.

‘The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don’t touch the White House,’ he said.

‘That’s the bridge, the last bridge, going from the White House to the ballroom. Then, you get into the lobby of the ballroom and then you get into the magnificent, the main room and it’s something that has gotten incredible reviews,’ Trump added.

The White House was initially cagey about what the plans for the East Wing were, with suggestions that part of the structure would remain intact.

Trump, announcing the ballroom earlier this year, claimed: ‘It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.’

But last week, when he was hosting ballroom donors at a dinner in the East Room, the president appeared to say the quiet part out loud. 

Trump opened the gold curtains behind him to unveil the construction site.

‘It will be demolished,’ he said. ‘Everything out there is coming down and it will be replaced by the most beautiful ballroom.’ 

The New York Times reported that the demolition will be completed by this weekend and was the first to report the White House’s admission that the entire East Wing was coming down. 

A photograph obtained by journalist Chris Geidner from the vantage point of the Treasury Department on Tuesday showed just three walls of the East Wing still standing. 

The demolition has prompted outcry from former East Wing staffers from Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

A number of former staffers of Republican First Lady Pat Nixon had written to the National Capital Planning Commission to try and get the project stopped, according to East Wing Magazine. 

But Trump had already appointed Staff Secretary Will Scharf to lead the NCPC, with Scharf determining the government agency tasked with D.C.-area federal construction, did not oversee demolitions, just construction. 

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the ballroom project would be submitted to the NCPC, which traditionally keeps historic preservation in mind before green-lighting a proposal.

Democrats see a political opening from the optics of the project, which is happening amid a government shutdown that is seeing federal workers go without pay. 

‘I genuinely think the images of them destroying the East Wing of the White House could be a game changer in the elections,’ former Biden White House official Neera Tanden posted to X on Wednesday. 

She included polling data that showed Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger beating Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears by 13 points. 

Conservative Washington Examiner columnist Byron York even gave the White House some grief for the lack of transparency.  

‘The president needs to tell the public now what he is doing with the East Wing of the White House. And then tell the public why he didn’t tell them before he started doing it,’ York posted to X Tuesday night. 

When the ballroom project was announced in July, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked point-blank if the East Wing would be demolished for the massive ballroom.

She answered that the ‘necessary construction will take place’ and the East Wing will be ‘modernized’. 

This week the White House has pushed out a furious response against the outcry, sending out a press release Tuesday to reporters blasting ‘unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies’ for creating ‘manufactured outrage’ over the East Wing’s demolition.

The press release included historical photographs showing previous demolitions and construction projects at the White House dating back to 1902.