Heavy rain in Washington on Thursday thwarted Donald Trump’s first scheduled event in the paved over Rose Garden: a dinner with tech leaders.
Instead, the event was held in the State Dining Room. Attendees included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who was seated to the president’s right, as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Elon Musk was not present. The X owner wrote on his platform Thursday morning that he had been invited, but was sending a representative instead.
The Rose Garden—to the extent that it is still a garden—was paved over this summer. It now has white tables and chairs on what the president calls a “soft, beautiful stone” floor in order to make it look like Mar-a-Lago.
The White House is now apparently calling it a club.
“The Rose Garden Club at the White House is the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CNN before Thursday’s dinner was relocated indoors.
“The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio.”
Trump had complained about the old Rose Garden because women with high heels would sink into the grass when it was wet.
“It’d take three, four, five days for it to dry out, and we couldn‘t use it for really the intended purpose,” he told reporters last month. “So whether they had events or they had news conferences, we couldn‘t use it.”
The White House did not immediately respond when asked by the Daily Beast about the next scheduled gathering at the site.
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