‘Dictator-for-life vibes’: our architecture critic on Trump’s bulletproof ballroom bling

He has already turned the Oval Office into a wrestler’s changing room. Now the president is building a place so gilded Nero would feel at home. Why did he pick an architect whose speciality is Catholic churches?As if truffling thuggishly in pursuit of the Nobel peace prize wasn’t enough, the spectacle of bulldozers ripping into the White House is yet more evidence of Donald Trump’s unstinting quest for epic self-aggrandisement. Having decreed the East Wing not fit for purpose &