The Washington Post hack Dan Diamond has yet another ballroom bashing article. It seems President Trump fired the six members of the independent Commission of Fine Arts.
The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that had expected to review some of President Donald Trump’s construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom.
Fury on Social Media
It really upset people. Mehdi Hassan wrote on x: Just non stop corruption and conflicts from this administration. So hard to keep up.
Cory Booker wrote: This is outrageous. He is not a king.
Unbiased NPR subtly wrote:
The White House has fired six members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on design plans for monuments, memorials, coins and federal buildings. The seven member commission is made up of experts in architecture, art, urban and landscape design. Since its creation in 1910, the commission has reviewed plans for everything from Arlington National Cemetery to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
NPR left the detail about Biden firing four of Trump’s commissioners to the last paragraph.
They left out important information which you can find deep into Diamond’s article:
Biden in 2021 fired Trump appointees from the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, with Biden administration officials at the time defending the moves as an effort to diversify the panels. It was the first time in the commissions’ history that a president had forced out sitting members, drawing some criticism from art and architecture experts that Biden was politicizing its work.
Biden fired Trump’s appointees because they were all white. And how can a commission be independent if the President hires and fires them?
Benjamin Dominech, Editor of The Spectator, shed some light on the matter, writing, Joe Biden removed the Trump appointed members of the Commission on Fine Arts in 21-22, at the time an unprecedented event, because they were white. Dan Diamond buries this and spins it in his second to last graf, because he is, as he has always been, an absolute partisan hack.
Diamond, master of hackery, notes that one of the members left on her own:
The Commission of Fine Arts has been without a leader since earlier this year, when architect Billie Tsien, who had chaired the panel since 2021, resigned. Tsien, who is helping construct the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, told The Post that she was removing herself from the CFA because her term expired in May and she assumed that Trump would not reappoint her.
She’s helping design this thing:
As first reported by The Washington Post, the commissioners who were terminated are Bruce Redman Becker, Peter D. Cook, Lisa E. Delplace, William J. Lenihan, Justin Garrett Moore [black] and vice chair Hazel Ruth Edwards [black]. The chair position, now vacant, was held by Billie Tsien [Asian], one of the architects working on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
