Know Your Enemy - UNLOCKED: Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner)

We're unpaywalling our excellent conversation with Kate Wagner (of McMansion Hell) about Trump's White House ballroom project and the politics of architecture.

Duration: 1h 1m
Broadcast on: 22 Dec 2025
Audio Format: other

This episode originally aired November 17, 2025 on Patreon — we're unlocking it as a holiday treat.

If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoing arguments about architecture that his ascension has occasioned. Proponents of a RETVRN to the architectural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome are prominent in MAGA circles; partisans of a neo-classical revival populate government commissions, and their prescriptions find expression in various executive orders again. To understand who these people are, what their movement wants, and the kernel of truth in their grievances, we talked to architectural critic and proprietor of McMansion Hell Kate Wagner. We start by analyzing Trump's ballroom and the demolishing the East Wing of the White House — the perfect way into MAGA architecture and the mind of their Beautiful Builder himself, Donald J. Trump.

Sources:

Kate Wagner, "Duncing About Architecture," New Republic, Feb 8, 2020

— "Trump Will Not Make Architecture Great Again," The Nation, Jan 7, 2025

— "The Real Problem With Trump’s Cheesy Neoclassical Building Fetish," Feb 12, 2025

— "what the fuck are we doing anymore," The Late Review, Jan 9, 2025.

— "Wrecking Ballroom," The New York Review of Architecture, Dec 17, 2025.

Charlie Nash, "Trump Admits He Could've Built Ballroom Without Destroying the East Wing, But 'It Looked Like Hell,'" Mediate, Nov 10, 2025

Jonathan Edwards & Dan Diamond, "Trump hires new White House ballroom architect," WaPo, Dec 4, 2025.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Welcome listeners to a special holiday 2025 episode of Know Your Enemy. I'm Sam Adler Bell, one of your podcast co-hosts, and I'm not at this exact moment joined by my dear friend Matthew Sittman, but have patience. He'll be here very soon. What you're about to hear is an episode we released for paid subscribers on November 17th. The conversation about Trump's White House ballroom renovation project and the politics of architecture, featuring the great Kate Wagner, who is genuinely one of my favorite writers and critics, and the proprietor of the McMansion Hell blog. This episode was without question our most beloved Patreon episode of the year. Many of our paid subscribers requested that we put it out in front of the paywall, and as a Christmas treat, we're releasing it for you, the freeloaders. But a couple of quick notes before we get to the interview, since we recorded this episode, the architect Trump initially hired to oversee the project James McCreary, who you'll hear about a bit when we get to the interview with Kate, was replaced by another architect, a developer-friendly DC firm with a bit more experience doing projects of this size. But the ballroom and the demolition of the East Wing continue a pace. Indeed, a few weeks ago, Trump said during a cabinet meeting that the pile drivers operate "all night" and that they've created a rift in his marriage. The president said he loves the sound, while First Lady Melania Trump has asked him to make the constant pounding stop. Trump, according to Washington Post, says he replied, "Sorry, darling, that's progress. Enjoy and Merry Christmas." Alright, welcome listeners to this very special bonus episode of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam Heather Bell, and a writer I'm so excited to talk to, Kate Wagner. Welcome. Thank you. This is going to be so much fun. I really have so many questions for you. I've admired your work for a long time, and we're so glad you're here with us. Thank you so much. I've admired your work as well. Big pan of the pod. Thank you. Thank you. That's very flattering. Well, as listeners, I bet a lot of our listeners are aware of Kate is the proprietor of the McMansion Hell blog. She's also a architectural critic and writer of excellent essays about other topics. She has a sub-stack, the late review. You can check that out. I really enjoy everything that Kate writes there, from the personal to the political to the critical. You're also working on a book, but we're not going to stress you out by talking about that. Thank you. Kate, we wanted to have you on to talk about Trump in architecture, MAGA architecture, the phenomenon during the Trump years of the kind of trade return types, but applied to architecture. This is found its way into executive orders. And normally the occasion for this is the destruction of the East Wing, the construction of the Trump ballroom. But before we get there, Kate, how did you find your way into architectural criticism, and then specifically picking up with what Trump was doing? Tell us how you got into this line of work. Did you grow up in a McMansion? I did not. I feel like I would have a completely different relationship to them if I grew up in one. But they did build one next door, and they demolished a very pristine piece of Sandhills ecosystem in North Carolina to do so. And so I had a grudge from about the sixth grade onward. The origin story of McMansion. Kate. And it's so funny, because our house is really not so bad in the grand scheme of McMansionism. If you get to Naperville, Illinois, then you get to see some real McMansions. But I first got interested in architecture as a teenager, and writing around the same time. I actually went to music school, but then I went to school to actually work on concert halls as a designer. And that's when I started writing about architecture. So I've been an architecture critic for about 10 years now, it'll be 10 years next year. I got my start writing my blog, McMansion Howl, and then shortly thereafter I became a contributor to many magazines. So I was writing for Curb. I was the architecture critic at the New Republic briefly. I had a column at the Baffler. And now I'm the critic at the nation. But writing about Trump, my career began during the first Trump administration. And so immediately, once I started writing for magazines, Trump was like a lightning rod for architectural discourse at large, especially because he's a

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We're unpaywalling our excellent conversation with Kate Wagner (of McMansion Hell) about Trump's White House ballroom project and the politics of architecture.