Know Your Enemy - Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser]

Matt and Sam talk to McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner about Trump's White House ballroom.

Duration: 4m
Broadcast on: 17 Nov 2025
Audio Format: other

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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 have found expression in several executive orders. 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.

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

I feel like there's this way in which the kind of right-wing architecture types that we're discussing. There's a way in which what we see in the built environment around us, the types of buildings we build, the design of them reflects something about the state of our souls. Like this thing they don't like is also a result of kind of secularization and through the West for getting God. I find myself like actually in some agreement about this criticism, I actually think that contemporary architectural culture is very weak right now. I mean it has been weak for quite some time in part because you know the financialization of real estate had architectural ramifications. You look at a skyscraper now that's built for like sales force or whatever and it's like all steel and glass and it's all reflective and it looks exactly the same as every other skyscraper because that's just the most economical way to build. That's like the kind of you know modern signifier of like the firm. You look at that and you compare it's like Louis Sullivan with his like lusciously ornamented actually like form pushing developments like these innovations that he made like pushing architecture forward. Like that's not really happening right now like the architecture we build actually does reflect the society we live in and it's not really a good one. It's not an egalitarian one. It's not really a soulful one either I would argue. Kate, one of your essays that I read in preparation for this was January 2025 in the nation. Trump will not make architecture great again but there's a line in there I wanted to read just because I thought it would capture something important. You write right wingers were able to capitalize kind of on this you know home matter because underlying it was an inconvenient truth. A lot of new buildings are ugly and I sort of think like as with say make America healthy again right people should be concerned about what is in our food right what chemicals we put in our bodies in the water we drink what we ingest right the ingredients high fructose corn syrup all that like people aren't wrong to be concerned about them just like people aren't wrong to kind of rebel against certain styles of buildings being built today that they you know find soulless and ugly. But in the same way they won't look at the political economy underlying it like why do we have high fructose corn syrup because of corn subsidies because of like actual kind of like trajectories in trade and imperial obligations or aspirations of the country you know and they don't want to put the screws to any like massive agribusiness interests that would be required to actually make America healthy again. I think part of the reason why the right has captured so much of the public discourse in this matter is because architects are not participating in public discourse writ large and people see all of this they see these ugly apartment buildings and they're just like why is it ugly and there's no one there to answer that question from the architectural establishment and so you have these rightoids with the you know the Hellenic statue twitter profile pictures being like it's because they hate you for being white. You know like or it's just like a conspiracy of architects against beauty which I think is like really absurd being an architect in this day and age is a shitty job like architects are underpaid they're overworked they're completely constrained by liability concerns because you know for example if you wanted to add a curve if you wanted to add a detail to a building that's a whole new set of drawings it's a lot of labor work you have to build models you know if you have a curve in the building as opposed to it being straight that opens it to leaking and there's liability issues and so like why does everything look

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Matt and Sam talk to McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner about Trump's White House ballroom.