The sound of bulldozers tearing into the East Wing of the White House has drawn global outrage—but few reactions were as scathing as that of Dr. Matthew Vincent, an American archaeologist who has spent years documenting the recovery of artifacts looted by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Vincent, who has been dubbed a “real-life Indiana Jones” for his work protecting endangered heritage sites, says Donald Trump’s $300 million White House demolition project is nothing short of “authoritarian vandalism.”

“The first reaction I had was, what the f—? It’s not OK,” Vincent said in an interview. “The White House doesn’t belong to Donald Trump—it belongs to the American people.”

Trump’s controversial decision to tear down the historic East Wing—home to decades of presidential history and public tours—has sparked fury across the political spectrum. Originally constructed in 1902 during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, the wing has witnessed generations of American milestones.

Now, under Trump’s directive, it’s being reduced to rubble to make way for a sprawling, gold-accented 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a vanity project critics call “Mar-a-Lago on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

To Vincent, the destruction carries eerie echoes of the cultural purges he witnessed in the Middle East.

“Behind this is an ideology—to disregard the past and those who came before it,” he said. “If we don’t like something, we erase it. That’s exactly what ISIS did.”

During the mid-2010s, ISIS militants blew up ancient temples in Palmyra, smashed priceless relics in Mosul’s museum, and dynamited 12th-century mosques in the name of “purity.” For Vincent, the motivation—erasing the collective memory of a people—is the same.

“It’s two sides of the same coin,” he explained. “Ideologically driven people destroying symbols of shared history to replace them with monuments to themselves. It’s propaganda through demolition.”

Satellite imagery released this week shows the East Wing’s transformation from a stately landmark to a construction site. Massive excavators claw through marble and limestone as Trump boasts that the sound of wrecking is “music to my ears.”

His aides insist the new ballroom—funded by private donors, including several Silicon Valley billionaires—will become a “world-class space for state dinners.” But preservationists say Trump bypassed all oversight from the National Capital Planning Commission and Historic Preservation Office, leaving Washington’s legal experts aghast.

Vincent sees something far darker.

“It’s a symbolic act,” he warned. “You’re rewriting what the White House means. You’re deleting its history to project power. That’s what tyrants do.”

The archaeologist’s condemnation comes as Trump’s administration continues to brush off criticism. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed outrage as “fake drama,” calling the construction “a historic upgrade” that uses “no taxpayer dollars.”

But the comparison to ISIS—a group synonymous with cultural annihilation—has struck a nerve.

In one of the most haunting parallels, Vincent recalled standing amid the rubble of Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch, destroyed by jihadists in 2015. He described watching local Syrians cry as their history was literally blown to dust.

“That same disregard—the idea that the past doesn’t matter, that you can bulldoze memory because you don’t like what it represents—is what I see happening in Washington,” he said.

Experts warn that the destruction of the East Wing and Trump’s earlier overhaul of the Rose Garden—which replaced historic plantings with a Mar-a-Lago–style patio and striped umbrellas—represent a deeper erasure of national identity.

“Never again will we hear a reporter say, ‘Live from the Rose Garden,’” Vincent lamented. “It’s gone. It’s all been turned into a Florida resort.”

Trump’s supporters argue the president is simply “modernizing” the White House. But to heritage advocates, it’s an act of cultural violence—stripping away history for personal glorification.

Vincent, who now heads the American Center of Research in Jordan, says Americans should be “outraged” by what’s happening to their most iconic building.

“The checks and balances that protected national heritage are gone,” he said. “People should be demanding accountability, even impeachment. The destruction of a nation’s symbols is how democracy dies—quietly, behind the noise of construction.”

As the dust settles over the East Wing’s ruins, Vincent’s warning hangs heavy: what begins as architecture can end as ideology.

And in Trump’s Washington, history itself is under demolition.