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Had he kept his mouth shut about his racist views for just a couple of years longer, we might never know how hate-filled the guy was, but I tend to think it’s good that he revealed his true nature before he died. Otherwise, the undeserving man would have been more celebrated when he passed.

It is worth mentioning, though, just how successful Adams had been. Dilbert ran from 1999 until 2023, totaling more than 12,000 comic strips. Dilbert appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers at its height. The comic also had tons of merchandise made and a short-lived cartoon series (which was great, but that’s a different hill to die on for another day). The reason for this success was that Dilbert perfectly captured the frustrations of working in a corporate office in a way that was on par with Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space, as well as the British and American versions of The Office (especially the British original). Dilbert spoke to people trapped in that monotony themselves, so much so that it became common for office workers to post Dilbert comics on the inside of their cubicles.

Image: Scott Adams

Recently, Polygon has been tracking down the best quotes and panels of some of the greatest comic strips of all time, including Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, and The Far Side. And while I still think Adams was an awful person, I wondered if it might be possible to track down the best Dilbert quote, too — a quote that spoke to why the comic was so successful, regardless of the man behind the strip — if such a thing is even possible.

I’ll admit that I didn't enjoy this search as much as the other comic strip pieces I’ve done. When revisiting the likes of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, I would get caught up in reading dozens of comics, simply out of the pure joy they brought. But with Dilbert, I couldn’t quite get myself to forget who I was reading, even if the comics themselves were entirely apolitical.

I wanted to pick a quote that spoke to Dilbert’s central, cynical viewpoint, specifically the frustrations of working with people in an office, particularly in a setting where a person feels they are smarter and more qualified than most of the people around and definitely those above them. In that regard, there were a lot of good quotes, like, “Leadership is the art of trading imaginary things in the future for real things today.”

Image: Scott Adams

“The key to happiness is self-delusion” is another good one.

Image: Scott Adams

My favorite that I found ended up being “As you gain experience, you’ll realize that all logical questions are considered insubordination.”

Image: Scott Adams

But regardless of how funny and well-written these quotes are and how well they speak to that corporate frustration that made Adams’ creation famous, I felt like the best Dilbert quote shouldn’t just speak to that cynical sense of frustration. It should also be a rebuke of Adams’ hateful viewpoints, which is why I’ll say that this is the best Dilbert quote:

“When did ignorance become a point of view?”

Image: Scott Adams

There may very well be better Dilbert quotes out there, but that’s about all the Dilbert I can take right now. %!s()

“Ellen asked me to let you know that she recently took a fall,” Gyllenhaal said from the podium. “She’s OK, but she is moving more slowly — which is fine because it’ll give us more time to clap.”

Indeed, the room burst into applause as Burstyn, clad in a vibrant yellow gown, sauntered onto the stage with a walker. Burstyn cried and wiped away her tears with a tissue as she was greeted with a heartfelt, minutes-long standing ovation.

“You’re making me cry!” she said, which did little to stop the enthusiastic applause. “You’re overwhelming me, you know! I don’t know how to recover from that generous greeting.”

Burstyn has achieved a lot in her seven-decade career in Hollywood, which she was quick to remind the crowd, but she puts the Venice award among the top honors.

“You can’t imagine how meaningful this is to me It’s one thing to win an Oscar, a Tony or an Emmy — all of which I’ve won,” she said. “But this … it’s a lot.”

Since she learned she’d receive the Golden Lion, she said, she’s been reflecting on her life — and what it means to get a career tribute.

“At 93, it means you have a far about of lifetime to look back on,” she said. “I thought, maybe it’s not just a record of what you’ve accomplished, but what you’ve learned.”

During her speech, she recalled that while shooting Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” she was required to film a nighttime driving scene while the director and the cinematographer were blocking her view of the street.

“I couldn’t see the side of the road; I could go off and kill all of us,” Burstyn said. “But then I noticed, this is a two-way road. There’s a white line in the middle of the road, and I can see that. So all I have to do is look up to the left, and follow the white line. And that’s how I managed to not kill Martin Scorsese.”

She then drew a parallel between the funny story and the fraught state of the U.S. right now, saying: “I wanted to close out saying how deeply appreciative I am of this Golden Lion and I hope — no, pray — that my own country will find its own white line.”

Burstyn was awarded the Golden Lion on Monday afternoon during the premiere of Gyllenhaal’s short film “Flesh Impact.” Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson and Murray Bartlett, her co-stars in “Place to Be,” a comedic drama that premieres Wednesday on the Lido, attended the ceremony. The trio were among the first to lead another standing ovation when Burstyn exited the stage and went to sit in the audience.

Dedicated to Marilyn Monroe on what would be her 100th birthday, the 20-minute-long “Flesh Impact” portrays Dakota Johnson as the actress at the height of her fame and Burstyn as the version of Monroe the world never got to see. The star died on Aug. 4, 1962 at age 36 from an acute barbiturate overdose. The short’s title, “Flesh Impact,” comes from a phrase once used to describe the aura of Monroe — “that she looked so real and luminous on camera that viewers felt they could touch her through the screen,” according to the synopsis.

Prior to the ceremony, Burstyn sat on Monday morning for a press conference and spoke about a fleeting encounter with Monroe way back when.

“We never met. We saw each other once. We went to a nightclub, and she was sitting across from me,” Burstyn recalled. “And of course, I was enchanted by just looking at her. She was such a magical creature. And then she looked at me and nodded at me. And I was very early in my career, and I thought, was I just recognized by Marilyn Monroe?”

She had another connection to Monroe, through Ralph Roberts, an actor-turned-masseur to the stars.

“Ralph Roberts, who had been Marilyn’s masseur, and not only that, but her confidant, he had lots of stories to tell me about Marilyn,” Burstyn said. “So I used to get my massages and hear Marilyn’s stories. My favorite one was that her whole persona was a construction.”

Burstyn was asked if she had any other memorable encounters with other Hollywood luminaries, to which she responded, “When I met Marlon Brando briefly, and I almost fainted. That was pretty spectacular.”

Then, she cracked, “I can’t think of anyone else — it mustn’t have impressed me too much.”

She also recalled the early career advice she received from Bette Davis, who was 24 years her senior.

“I had just become known,” Burstyn said. “I was new, but famous. I met [Davis] and she said, ‘Let me tell you one thing, honey. At the beginning of your illustrious career, the only thing that’s important is your work. Anybody that tries to get in the way of you and your work, they’re your enemy. You know what you say to them? ‘You are my enemy.’ I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Davis…” 

Burstyn has two movies at Venice, the other being Kornél Mundruczó’s quirky drama “Place to Be,” which premieres on Wednesday. She stars in “Place to Be” alongside Waititi, Anderson, Édgar Ramírez, Lena Waithe and Bartlett. Mundruczó and Burstyn previously collaborated on “Pieces of a Woman,” which premiered on the Lido in 2020.

Burstyn, who is still acting as a nonagenarian, described her rationale for saying “yes” to projects.

“When I get a script, I sit down and read it — and if it makes me laugh, that’s good. If it makes me cry, that’s good. If it makes me laugh and cry, that’s terrific,” she said. “By the time I finish the script, I have to feel moved in some way to say, ‘I want to do this.'”

As Burstyn mentioned in her Golden Lion Speech, she is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, earning an Oscar for “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and a Tony for “Same Time, Next Year” in 1975, and two Emmys for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Political Animals” in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Over her 60-year career in Hollywood, Burstyn has received dozens of nominations for films and television shows including “The Exorcist,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Requiem for a Dream” and “House of Cards.”

Burstyn believes roles for women in entertainment have changed “enormously” over the decades. She added that although the industry is “not quite 50-50” in terms of parity, “they’re close.”

“When I first started working, which was 150 years ago, there were no women on set. No women crew. No women directing. It was all men,” she said. “If a woman was on set, it meant she was an actress. And then slowly, thanks to blessed Gloria Steinem, who just died, the consciousness started to be changed.” %!s()

Okay, glad we got that out of the way early because at Gamescom I played a little of its remake Persona 4 Revival, alongside interviewing series producer Kazuhisa Wada (via interpreter) to glean some new information and perspective on remaking a game like Persona 4. When I mention this is my first time playing Persona 4 to Wada, I receive a humoured eyebrow raise and the assurance that “We wanted this to be an excellent entry point for those who want their first taste of the game, but in order to do that, we need to get to the essence of what made Persona 4 great, and for that we need to grab the hearts of existing fans and make this game something they would remember.”

My limited time with Revival let me play a little of the main story, early in the game. As transfer student Yu Narukami, partied up alongside awkward classmate Yosuke, we fight a few mooks before encountering Yosuke’s Shadow form. In the real world, Yosuke, also a recent transfer student, has struggled to make friends. In the metaphysical realm, his shadow form manifests as a representation of his desperate hiding behind a class clown mask to cover his fear of loneliness. His shadow, his repressed inner self, is only defeated by Yosuke accepting his inner and outer self together.

In a separate section, we delve into a realm created by the subconscious of Yu's friend Yukiko – and take on the Shadow of Chie, another classmate of Yu. Enveloped by her envy of the conventionally beautiful Yukiko, the dominatrix-themed shadow form claims the girls' friendship is a lie, and purely for Chie's gain.

With there being quite a bit of time spent on combat in this demo, I can happily say that it feels fantastic, and my god, does it look beautiful. Persona 4, for the strength of its artstyle, is ultimately a PS2/PS Vita game, so it is stellar seeing that incredible art direction granted the modern touch of models and effects at the same fidelity as those of Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royal. I’m around twenty years late on saying Persona 4 has excellent turn-based combat, I know, but the rhythm of finding weaknesses and playing around patterns keeps me engaged and even led me, as a newcomer, to a touch of struggle against Shadow Chie. Small intricacies like choosing between spending mana or health on spells kept me on my toes, especially with such limited options so early in the game. In their approach to the remake’s combat, Wada lets me know that “as the original system is quite old now, especially compared to the modern standards of Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royal, there’s elements in there that will feel a little frustrating. We did our best to remove those stressful moments of the battle systems and update it to modern expectations.” To their credit, I find that the system does feel fair — minus one moment in which Shadow Yosuke obliterates me with two critical hits in a row thanks to the ‘One More’ system allowing for an extra turn on critical or weakness hit. Still, I guess that’s just turn-based RPG luck. So it goes.

Between battles, I have the joy of experiencing Persona 4’s writing and story for the first time. Due to the cultural osmosis inherent to being a girl who’s grown up on the internet, I have a decent awareness of Persona 4’s deal, its general themes of accepting the true self or slowly breaking down, its arcing narrative and its characters; still, actually being able to sit down and take it in via a preview of its remake is something special. The central conflict across the cast of the inner and outer self pulls me in instantly, and I’m impressed by how uncompromising the writing is about how much denying and pushing down your inner self will destroy you from the inside. Yosuke gently admitting “When you get down to it, all of this is me” and Chie yelling out “Don’t look at me!” while their Shadows took over are brilliant, efficient insights into their different approaches to their true selves and both touched my heart.

On a lighter note, after the battle sections, I also got to take the mysterious Marie on a date in the sleepy town of Inaba. Witnessing Yu’s attempt to make his date with Marie exciting in their quiet town during her social link was as touching as it was painfully funny; I’ve been Yu in that situation! It’s an uphill battle! Social links, a bond-making mechanic that not only builds up relationships between Yu and his party members/friends but also makes party members more effective in battle, are core to Persona 4 and apparently won’t be changing much. The story and social links themselves will remain just about the same in Revival, according to Wada, with some minor differences: “Our approach was to not touch the elements that made the game really special, so the characters and story are exactly as they were. That said, there are things that, when we looked at the script, seemed unclear or didn’t have as much information as we wanted to, so we tweaked things a little for additional nuance. The social links are, you know, the core elements of the characters you befriend in the game, so we didn’t really change anything.”

Wada’s note that the story and social links will be untouched other than tweaking a few things for nuance interests me, as I was curious if he’d specify what might be worth taking a second look at. Previously, he’s touched on Yosuke’s characterisation being “a little bit insensitive” (thanks Oisin!), which I take as a gentle way of saying ‘a homophobic asshole’, so a few changes wouldn’t be unwelcome. On the note of changes, Revival has also seen a full recast of its voice actors; from what I heard of the new performances in Revival, they're great, but it’s difficult to ignore the knowledge that several members of the original cast openly stated that they asked to return. Or in the case of original Yosuke actor Yuri Lowenthal specifically, ‘begged’ — so much for a second chance. As such, I’m similarly conflicted knowing that Wada stated in an interview with GamesRadar that “there were quite a few people we weren’t able to get.” In our conversation, Wada shed no more light on that disconnect, but revealed that the auditions for Revival weren’t labelled as such for the actors auditioning, but the team were “listening to the auditions and trying to pick people who matched the vibe of the characters, but at the same time giving them room to take them in their own direction.”

To close out the interview, I ask Wada a question I don’t feel is considered enough in the current zeitgeist of remasters and remakes being the reliable moneymaker for studios: why remake Persona 4 at all? “When we originally conceived the idea of Persona 3 Reload, we knew we wanted to do P4R as well; we had to put it on the backburner, but it was something we thought of at the same time. For me, I think a remaster or remake is some kind of cultural preservation. As a creator, it’s your duty to take the things you’ve done and make sure they’re not lost, and are still around in the modern day. From that same perspective, Persona 1 and 2 are something we’ll probably eventually do too.”

I can’t tell you I was expecting a soft confirmation of remakes of the first two games to come out of this interview, but I’m not about to complain. I appreciate Wada’s answer of cultural preservation being the driving force behind remaking their older work for his genuine acknowledgement that remakes do need a reason to exist other than just ‘money.’ I’m grateful for my time with Revival and Wada, and I think this experience is what has finally convinced me to give Persona 4 Golden a shot. I promise, I’m installing it as I write this!

Travel and accommodation to Gamescom were provided by Hooded Horse.

Still, she said her family's "happiest years" were those spent with her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in the White House.

Before they moved there, the couple lived in a 19th-century red-brick home in Georgetown, Washington, DC, which recently sold for $6.125 million, Mansion Global reported. The Kennedys bought the home in 1957 for $82,000.

While most of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' former homes can only be admired from the outside, one of her final properties is open to visitors.

Parts of what was once known as Red Gate Farm on Martha's Vineyard opened to the public last summer, The Vineyard Gazette reported in 2025. Five miles of public trails meander through the land, which the Kennedy family sold to two nonprofits in 2020 and is now known as Squibnocket Pond Reservation.

Here are all of the impressive places she lived in and owned in her lifetime.

Before she was a Kennedy or an Onassis, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier spent her early years in New York City.

In 1932, the Bouviers moved into an apartment on the sixth and seventh floors of 740 Park Avenue.

The apartment building was developed by her grandfather, James T. Lee, The New York Times reported. At least for a period, her father couldn't afford to furnish it so Jackie and her sister could roller skate from room to room, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The apartment building later became a home for billionaires and was once considered one of the most iconic apartment buildings in the city.

In 2017, her old apartment sold for $25.25 million.

In the 1940s, Bouvier's mother remarried, and they left New York.

They moved into a Georgian-style mansion called "Merrywood" in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, DC.

The 23,000-square-foot mansion, which was built in 1919, had nine bedrooms and 13 bathrooms.

Bouvier's mother had married an oil magnate named Hugh D. Auchincloss, who owned the mansion.

The home sits on the edge of the Potomac River and has an extensive garden.

Bouvier wrote fondly about the house in her diary, saying, "I always love it so at Merrywood — so peaceful … with the river and those great steep hills."

Bouvier spent her summers at her paternal grandfather's East Hampton estate.

The 8,500-square-foot home, which was built in 1917, is called "Lasata," which means "place of peace," in the native Algonquian language.

In 2023, fashion designer Tom Ford bought it for $52 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

She also spent some of her summers at her maternal grandfather's house in East Hampton called "Wildmoor."

The 18th-century home, covering about 5,700 square feet, was a shingle-and-clapboard wooden house with a view of fields, a swamp, and the sea, per the WSJ.

In 2021, the house was sold for $6.8 million.

Her next notable property was the Kennedy family's summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Joseph Kennedy Sr., John F. Kennedy's father, bought a white-shingled cottage in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1928 for $25,000, or about $470,000 today. The coastal Massachusetts cottage became the Kennedy family's home base for years to come.

Before they married, Bouvier and John F. Kennedy spent time together there.

It later became known as the "Kennedy Compound."

In 1953, Bouvier became a Kennedy when the couple married in Newport, Rhode Island.

They had the wedding reception at her mother's husband's sprawling estate, known as "Hammersmith Farm," anchored by a grand, 28-room Victorian-era mansion.

The property was last sold in 1999 for just over $8 million.

The estate became a part-time summer home for the Kennedys, along with the Kennedy Compound.

Jackie Kennedy spent summers on the estate during her childhood, and the Kennedys later vacationed there in the summer of 1961.

In 1953, not long after the Kennedys were married, they rented a four-story, four-bedroom house in Washington, DC.

The Kennedys lived there for almost two years.

They enjoyed throwing dinner parties and spending time in the back gardens.

The house, which was built in the 1940s, is about 3,000 square feet.

It last sold for $4 million in April 2025.

Two years later, in 1955, the Kennedys moved to "Hickory Hill," another Georgian-style house.

The home was built in 1815 and had a tennis court, a pool, and 12 fireplaces on a 5.6-acre plot in McLean, Virginia.

They bought it from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, The Washington Post reported.

Two years later, the Kennedys sold it for $125,000 to John's brother, Robert, who would end up raising his own family there.

Jackie didn't want to go back after her daughter was stillborn.

The couple sold it to Robert Kennedy for the same price they'd paid, The Washington Post reported.

Robert Kennedy was at the house when he heard John had been assassinated, the Baltimore Sun reported. He spent an hour alone, walking around the estate.

In 1956, the Kennedys bought a summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, right beside the original Kennedy summer home.

The 4,484-square-foot clapboarded home sat on less than an acre of land and soon became part of the "Kennedy Compound."

They spent $45,948 on the house, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In 1957, the Kennedys bought an 18th-century brick row house in Georgetown for $82,000.

Jackie spent about $18,000 on remodeling the home, called Marbury House for William Marbury (you might remember his name from social studies class), which was built in 1811, and she decorated it with armchairs and fine porcelain.

Her husband campaigned and was elected president during their years here, Architectural Digest reported. They lived in the home between 1957 and 1961, selling it soon after.

In 2026, the 5,215-square-foot, five-bedroom home sold for $6.125 million.

Though not a property she owned, Jackie lived in the White House with her family during her husband's presidency from 1961 to 1963.

She later described this period as her family's "happiest years," The Daily Beast reported.

While they were living in the White House, they spent winters at her father-in-law Joseph Kennedy's Palm Beach estate.

The Palm Beach estate became known as the Kennedys' "winter White House." In 2020, the house sold for $70 million and underwent extensive renovations by the new owner.

In 1963, after her husband was assassinated, Jackie and her children left the White House and moved into an 18th-century home in DC.

She paid around $175,000 for the five-bedroom house but only lived there for about a year. It was too public, and she reportedly became overwhelmed with all of the tourists.

In 2017, it was purchased for $5.25 million.

In 1964, they returned to New York after she bought a 5,300-square-foot apartment on Fifth Avenue.

The then-$200,000 apartment had five bathrooms, three fireplaces, two terraces, and a library. It also had a view of Central Park.

Jackie Kennedy owned the apartment until she died in 1994.

It was bought from her estate in 1995 for $9.2 million. 

The buyer said she hadn't done much upkeep, and they ended up gutting the whole apartment.

While she was alive, she began dividing her time between France, Greece, Martha's Vineyard, and New Jersey.

She kept New York as a home base.

She also got married again in 1968 to a Greek shipping magnate named Aristotle Onassis and became Jackie Onassis, or "Jackie O."

In 1974, she purchased a country home, a converted barn on almost 10 acres, for $200,000 in Peapack, New Jersey.

She liked the area for its natural beauty and space for horse riding, The New York Times reported.

She knew the area well because she had previously rented a farmhouse described by The Times as a "badly made-over barn" in Bernardsville since 1965.

After she bought the property, she painted it yellow with white trim.

After her death, a neighbor and friend bought the property for $1.47 million in 1997.

The neighbor, Marjorie McDonnell Walsh, told The Wall Street Journal they tore the house down.

"It doesn't matter," she said when declining to share details about the new house. "The much more important thing is we both love the property. It's a private valley. It's beautiful."

In 1979, after her second husband died, Jackie decided to build a new house called "Red Gate Farm" on 340 acres of Martha's Vineyard land.

She reportedly spent a little more than $1 million on the land, and then another $3.1 million on building the house, which was finished in 1981.

The main building covers 6,456 square feet. There's also a four-bedroom guest house, a pool, and a tennis court. The property stretches across a mile of beach.

Starting in 2020, parts of the estate were sold for $37 million. The land opened as a public park in 2025.

Two nonprofits, the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank and Sheriff's Meadow Foundation, bought 304 acres of the land for $27 million, the Vineyard Gazette reported, and the Land Bank later bought an additional 32 acres for $10 million. It is now known as Squibnocket Pond Reservation, and members of the public can walk on trails that cut through the land.

But it's not easy — in the summer, just 10 parking spaces are open to the public, and you need an online reservation to get them.

The Kennedy family still owns 65 acres of the estate, including the home, the Vineyard Gazette reported in 2025. This land is out of view from the public area, meaning you're unlikely to see any Kennedys running around, The New York Times reported.

Editor's note: This story was first published in September 2023 and was most recently updated in September 2026 with additional information. %!s()

Donald Trump has literally taken a wrecking ball to the White House — and US courts seem helpless to stop him.

The East Wing was destroyed without civic debate or congressional approval – and is now in the process of being replaced by a 90,000 square foot luxury ballroom that is double the size of the current White House complex.

That is an insult to the rule of law, to American history, and to every US citizen — because the White House ultimately belongs to us, not its current temporary occupant.

If you don’t believe this is a dangerous precedent, get your head around this: The Trump administration’s Department of Justice lawyers even argued in court that a president could order the Statue of Liberty demolished and there would be functionally nothing anyone could do about it because the courts would move too slowly to stop him.

The Supreme Court just proved them right. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three Democratic-appointed justices in trying to halt the destruction of the East Wing. Roberts wrote that the construction is likely unlawful because Congress never approved it.

He’s got the facts on his side. The Constitution gives Congress the power to make all rules respecting “property belonging to the United States.” For two centuries the White House has been renovated and maintained through congressional authorization and appropriation. Alteration and improvement of the executive residence has never meant unilateral demolition.

But in an assault on precedent, Roberts and the Democratic Justices were outvoted by the other five Republican court appointees, who, in an unsigned order, said nothing about whether the project was legal. They said only that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacked standing to sue.

So who does have standing if they don’t? The answer should be “any American citizen.” This is our history and our legacy. There are laws to ensure that no president can act like a king and destroy historic public property on a whim.

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The National Trust stated the principle plainly after the ruling. “We are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court’s ruling today,” said its president and CEO, Brent Leggs. The order “does not resolve our fundamental argument: that each president is a temporary steward of the People’s House and does not have the unilateral authority to demolish and redesign it without the approval of Congress,” concluding that the Trust “will continue to advocate, with our partners, on behalf of the American people, the democratic values of our nation, and the preservation of our country’s most historically significant places.”

But the Trump bum rush goes on. By the government’s own account in court filings, a 250-person crew has been working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, ignoring lower court riders. The administration told the courts the structure is “beyond the point of return.” The goal is a fait accompli: by the time judges definitively rule on legality, the ballroom will be built.

This is an Atlantic City mob-boss tactic, and it fits a pattern. Trump has tried to remake the Kennedy Center in his own image. He paved the Rose Garden. He’s building a massive triumphal arch and suggested naming it after himself. He has slapped gilded skid marks on every surface of the White House. The gilding can be scraped off. Buildings cannot be un-demolished.

If you have any doubt that this is all about Trump’s endlessly needy ego, listen to the Don himself: “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

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Then there’s the money. Trump promised that the ballroom would be built with “ZERO Dollars of Taxpayer Money” – funded by himself and donors like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and Coinbase – corporations that understand every decision with this president is transactional. But the price tag swelled from $200 million to $400 million in five months. A side staircase to nowhere disappeared and then reappeared. The contractor’s own estimate now puts the real cost at $600 million, with roughly half that coming from the Secret Service and the White House. That’s your money. Senate Republicans proposed another $1 billion in federal money for “security adjustments and upgrades” tied to the project. The donors get naming rights. Taxpayers get the bill.

If you want to know how a mob boss runs a public works project, look at the Reflecting Pool. The job went, no-bid, to a contractor Trump said had built one of his own swimming pools. A firm with actual Reflecting Pool experience had passed because the July 4 deadline was unworkable. The blue coating peeled. Algae took over. So the boss found a guy to take the fall. The guy was David Hearn, a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist accused of massive vandalism with a box cutter – a felony carrying up to 10 years. His crime, by his account, was stopping to look and dipping his hand in the water. Then Jeanine Pirro broke omertà and uncharacteristically told the truth. On July 31, she moved to dismiss the charges, writing that the rush produced hasty, botched work in the reflecting pool. But Roy Cohen’s clients never admit making a mistake. They double down on the lie. So Trump disagreed “100 percent.” He expects his lawyers to lie on his behalf. Lincoln’s mirror is now a $14 million mudhole.

Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if a Democratic president tried anything remotely like this. And they’d be right to. Principles don’t matter if you abandon them whenever a president of your own party does as he pleases. The guardrails that once relied on a president’s common sense and common decency clearly cannot be taken for granted anymore.

So here is a modest proposal. The Democrats running for president should pledge to take down Trump’s luxury ballroom and rebuild the East Wing as it was, restoring the historic symmetry of the White House. Whatever underground security structures have been built should stay: anything practical and related to national security belongs there. But the monument to one man’s ego above ground should be swept into the ash-heap of history.

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When the remaining Republican justices finally solve the mystery of who has standing to stop the destruction of the White House it will be after Trump leaves office. They will conclude the demolition was illegal — and then declare on those grounds that the next president cannot possibly demolish Trump’s ballroom. But that would let the crime stand without any accountability. The purpose of this proposal is not to perpetuate Trump’s cycle of destruction but to end it, by ensuring there is a consequence for breaking the law, and making sure it can never happen again.

Trump took a wrecking ball to the People’s House. The people should reserve the right to take one to his ballroom. %!s()