The White House has revealed who is paying for the president’s $300 million ballroom that will replace the demolished East Wing.
The president has vowed that taxpayers won’t be footing the bill for the 90,000-square-foot vanity project, which Trump originally said would cost one-third of the current price tag and would pay “total respect” to the existing White House structures.
Instead, the historic East Wing is being torn down, and project renderings show the massive space will dwarf the White House’s 55,000-square foot executive residence, where presidents and their families have traditionally lived.
The White House has now revealed that the ballroom—which still hasn’t been vetted by the National Capital Planning Commission, as required by law—is being funded by tech giants, defense contractors, media conglomerates, conservative megadonors, and crypto investors, CNN reported.
Many of the companies on the list have been seeking tariff carve-outs, merger approvals, security and defense contracts, and favorable regulatory treatment from the Trump administration.
The list includes tech giants Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and HP. Last month, the president hosted a dinner that featured tech titans fawning over Trump. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook all attended.
Cook—whose smartphones have been exempted from some of Trump’s most devastating tariffs—also gifted the president a custom plaque with a 24-karat gold base during a visit to the White House in August.
On the defense and security side, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, and data firm Palantir, which is supercharging Trump’s revenge lawsuits and mass deportation efforts, have all donated to the president’s ballroom.
Comcast Corporation has also chipped in despite being in the president’s crosshairs for month. Trump has attacked its CEO and threatened to strip NBC, which is owned by Comcast, of its broadcast license.
Then there’s the crypto contingent. Crypto platform Coinbase is among the donors, along with billionaire crypto investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Trump, who vowed to be the “first crypto president,” has personally raked in more than $1 billion over the past year thanks to an industry boom fueled by his administration’s own crypto-friendly policies.
Other big names on the list of ballroom donors include T-Mobile, tobacco giant Altria Group, Inc., Union Pacific Railroad, and Trumpy billionaires such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Marvel chair Isaac Perlmutter.
The rail company is preparing to seek approval for a merger to form the nation’s first coast-to-coast freight rail operator, CNBC reported earlier this month.
The president insisted again on Wednesday that the ballroom would be “paid for 100 percent by me and some friends of mine,” and yet there are signs taxpayers could end up on the book for the project after all.
Earlier this week, Trump—who is reportedly demanding that his own Justice Department pay him $230 million in taxpayer money as compensation for the federal investigations he faced during Joe Biden’s tenure—suggested he was would use damages from his legal battles to finance the project.
“They probably owe me a lot of money, but if I get money from our country, I’ll probably do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House while we restore the White House,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on the ballroom plans.
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