This isn’t the first online tiff between children of presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. This one is over Trump’s tear-down of the White House East Wing.
Tourists in Washington, DC, are unhappy about White House construction
USA TODAY’s White House Correspondent Zac Anderson spoke to tourists who flocked to the White House to get a look at the construction.
- Chelsea Clinton criticized Donald Trump’s renovation of the White House East Wing in a USA TODAY opinion article.
- Donald Trump Jr. responded on social media, referencing past controversies involving Clinton’s parents.
- The two have a history of exchanging critical comments about each other on social media platforms.
Donald Trump Jr. ripped Chelsea Clinton on social media after she blasted his father’s demolition of White House’s East Wing.
Clinton took to the social media platform X on Oct. 23 to promote her USA TODAY opinion article criticizing President Donald Trump’s teardown of the historic building’s East Wing to construct a $300 million ballroom.
The daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chelsea, 45, who lived in the White House from 1993 to 2001, said it was “unsettling” to see Trump’s extreme makeover of the 225-year-old White House, apparently without a historic preservation review or involvement of any historians.
“The erasure of the East Wing isn’t just about marble or plaster — it’s about President Trump again taking a wrecking ball to our heritage, while targeting our democracy, and the rule-of-law,” Clinton wrote on X on Oct. 23.
Trump Jr. responded on Oct. 24, while also taking aim at her parents and President Clinton, in particular.
“Lol, your parents tried stealing furniture and silverware from the White House… and let’s not talk about the intern,” wrote Trump Jr., making a thinly-veiled reference to the scandal between President Clinton and his former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. “Sit this one out.”
Chelsea Clinton apparently hasn’t responded. However, the two are no strangers to sniping about each other on social media.
One of the more recent incidents occurred in August 2024, when Trump Jr. mocked Clinton on X over a New York Post article that said Clinton was seeking a possible ambassadorial role in a potential Kamala Harris presidential administration.
Clinton responded, dismissing the rumor and going after Trump Jr. for believing it.”
In her USA TODAY opinion article, Clinton conceded that past presidents and first ladies have made changes to the White House that “added elements for efficiency, for comfort, for aesthetics.” But she said there is no evidence that the president consulted with experts to preserve the history and integrity of the building.
“With less than a year until we celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary, it is unsettling that such substantial alterations to the 225-year-old People’s House are being undertaken without a historic-preservation review and seemingly without the involvement of any historians, and I would love to be proven wrong here,” Clinton wrote.
