President Donald Trump has made the construction of a ballroom one of his foremost priorities, focusing on it even as his war with Iran spirals out and the economy implodes. When he demolished the East Wing to make way for it, writes New York Times contributor and gender researcher Azadeh Moaveni, he essentially made himself “president and first lady” by assuming the duties traditionally wielded by the latter while his wife was pushed aside.
Jackie Kennedy is credited with turning White House state dinners into arguably the most coveted invitation in the world, but as Moaveni explains, “John F. Kennedy himself was gloriously attuned to the power of setting the political tone through entertaining. He often called his social secretary, Tish Baldrige, to discuss household matters, and once pushed for French dishes on menus to be listed in English to avoid sounding too effetely European. Ms. Baldrige herself approached these dinners with ruthless political acumen. She asked the C.I.A. to prepare profiles of world leaders for Mrs. Kennedy, sent the agency thank-you notes and diarized how America had performed.” Since then, White House dinners have been wielded with similarly careful attention to how the experience can drive a political agenda. And while Trump has claimed that he needs the ballroom to such ends, his approach, argues Moaveni, hasn’t made that case.
“While the president is keenly attuned to the importance of a true state dinner,” writes Moaveni, “he has hosted only two in his second term, both for figures — King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and President Xi Jinping of China and his wife — for whom no less formal an occasion would be appropriate. The dearth of state dinners held thus far by the builder president — the president who dreams of America’s future parties — has not helped make the case for the ballroom’s urgency. Neither does the absent voice of the first lady on the matter, nor the absence of a social secretary in toto.”
As Moaveni elaborates, “Traditionally, the first lady and the social secretary play central roles in these dinners. Mr. Trump at times appears to wish to be both president and first lady. His dominant presence while hosting steals the limelight from Mrs. Trump, whose projects and advocacy work, much like those of the impressive but overlooked Pat Nixon, suffer from inadequate public and media attention. How widely is it known, for instance, that she was instrumental in getting the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes deepfake and revenge porn, passed in Congress? Or that her team helps push for the return of kidnapped Ukrainian children from Russia?”
As much as the state dinner evolved as a tool of statecraft, Moaveni explains that it also trailblazed a path for women to participate in the presidency and political life. The social secretary was the first staff position on the federal payroll awarded to a first lady, and the first role in the White House for a woman above the grade of maid, clerk, or cook. “This is partly why the razing of the East Wing was traumatic,” writes Moaveni. “It demolished a hallowed site of women’s history with blitheness. There was nobody there to pause and say: Here was the place where Eleanor Roosevelt’s aides toiled during the Second World War. Here was where they organized women-only news conferences to push newsrooms to hire more women and helped the first lady sell the New Deal to a suffering, frightened America.”
According to Moaveni, those angered by the demolition “are contending now with the loss of that office’s symbolic role — both as the soul of the East Wing as a physical structure and as the driving force behind the spectacle of political entertaining. The first lady is historically the star of the state dinner, taking on queenly attributes and accruing cultural capital that she then uses to advance her projects and the presidency. At the recent state dinner for Mr. Xi, by contrast, Mrs. Trump almost seemed aware she would not be the center of attention: She wore trousers, which had an almost Fräulein Maria-level depomping effect.”
During Trump’s first presidency, some in his orbit pushed him to deploy Melania more prominently, but were rebuffed. As Moaveni explains, “One aide who worked for the White House during the first Trump term told me Mr. Trump approached the presidency as a one-man show. His masculinist, warrior persona made the traditional softening effect of a consort unwelcome.” He could also not stand sharing attention, the aide explained, the very opposite of John F. Kennedy, who once famously said during a state visit to France, “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.” But the current president is unwilling to share the spotlight with anyone else, and as a result, writes Moaveni, “Mrs. Trump appears resigned, having absorbed the lessons of the first Trump administration.”