President Donald Trump’s in-progress White House ballroom will likely bear his name.
The controversial construction project, which required tearing down the 123-year-old East Wing, is already being called “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom,” ABC News reported Friday, citing senior administration officials.
Trump, when asked Thursday about what the ballroom would be named, grinned and replied: “I won’t get into that now.”
The move would be an outlier, since other White House rooms that bear the names of presidents were designated as such after they had died.
It wasn’t until 1945, for instance, that the Lincoln Bedroom got its name, the White House Historical Association notes. Likewise with the adjacent Lincoln Sitting Room.
The Roosevelt Room, named for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, had been informally known as the “fish room” until Richard Nixon assigned its current moniker in 1969.
Also of note is how the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden—which Trump destroyed with his East Wing demolition—was named that in April 1965, approximately 17 months after her husband’s assassination.
The cost of Trump’s pet project—which he has ordered federal workers not to photograph—has repeatedly been bumped up. In February, the 79-year-old president said he’d like to build it for $100 million. In July, when formal plans were made, the price doubled to $200 million. This week, as bulldozers leveled the East Wing, the cost was an estimated $300 million.
Donors for the 90,000-foot ballroom include a who’s who of tech giants, defense contractors, cryptocurrency investors and media conglomerates, according to CNN. Some are reportedly seeking to benefit from merger approvals, contracts, or otherwise favorable treatment that the famously transactional president can provide.
When reached for comment, a White House spokesperson did not deny the ABC News report.
“Any announcement made on the name of the ballroom will come directly from President Trump himself, and not through anonymous and unnamed sources,” Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast.
Some online commentators have joked that the structure should be referred to as something else: “The Epstein Ballroom,” in honor of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who was once a good friend of Trump’s.
Whatever the ballroom ends up being called, it is Trump’s “main priority,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, said Thursday, despite everything else going on.
The post Trump, 79, Plans to Name White House Ballroom After Himself appeared first on The Daily Beast.
