The White House staff could not have cared less about demolishing the East Wing

White House staff You don’t seem to care much about the ongoing demolition of the East Wing that’s happening in the middle of the government shutdown.

“It doesn’t affect me at all, to be honest,” a White House aide told WIRED. This source, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, adds that they “didn’t think about it” and that they “probably only heard a handful of people talking about it.”

President Donald Trump is moving forward with the construction of a privately financed, hundreds of millions of dollars in the auditorium, which will replace the East Wing, which was added to the White House in 1902 before undergoing an expansion in 1942. Photos of the demolition have been met with shock and varying degrees of anger, as the administration has not indicated that there will be any demolition crews involved in the auditorium project.

The East Wing of the White House is the traditional workplace of the First Ladies and their staff, not to mention the site of a long series of historic events.

This, ostensibly, is where First Lady Melania Trump’s office will be. Although the First Lady has chosen to remain in New York full-time so far in Trump 2.0, there were several teams of staff who were actually evacuated at some point before the cranes began to explode on Monday.

According to another White House official, the First Lady’s office will move to the White House. Calligraphers — yes, apparently there was a team of calligraphers who were working out of the East Wing — the White House Military Office, the White House Visitors Bureau, and the Office of Legislative Affairs, all moving to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street, according to the same official.

A spokesman for the First Lady declined to comment on where she will work when she is in D.C. or what her thoughts are about demolishing the site that once housed her famous display of 40 red Christmas trees in 2018. (This was the same holiday season when the Trump family received phone calls from children, and the president asked a 7-year-old if they “still believe in Santa” because at that age, “it’s marginal.”)

One Trumpworld source familiar with the situation was dismissive that the demolition could cause any problems with the First Lady or among other staffers.

“That’s not a problem,” they told WIRED, also requesting anonymity to discuss the mood internally. “This has not come up in a single conversation I’ve had with administration officials in the past few weeks.”