President Donald Trump has kicked off the new year with a shopping spree to buy lavish marble for his ever-expanding White House ballroom.
After ringing in 2026 with a VIP party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, followed by a New Year’s Day round at his golf club at West Palm Beach, the president headed to a local roadside warehouse on Friday to shop for his top vanity project.
The shopping spree took place at Arc Stone & Tile, a wholesale supplier located about six miles from Mar-a-Lago, next to a “College Hunks” Hauling Junk and Moving franchise.
The company has previously boasted about providing the marble for the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, suggesting Trump is trying to build a replica of it at the White House.
In a blog on their website, the business said that the marble at Mar-a-Lago comes from Brescia, Italy, and may have been chosen by Trump’s former wife, Ivana.
Installing it was “one of our greater undertakings at the time,” the business wrote, because Trump specifically wanted 4’x4′ panels, which are small and “not easy to handle.”
“Needless to say Mr. Trump’s team were involved in the details and carefully checking individual pieces and the overall color range, and working closely with the installation crew to put it all together,” the blog says.
Trump, 79, spent more than an hour in the store on Friday morning, and according to the White House, bought marble and onyx for the ballroom “at his own expense.”
“I haven’t put the cost together yet, but it’ll be substantial,” Arc Stone & Tile chief executive Mike Coiro told the Daily Beast, adding that he was “excited” his supplies would form part of the new ballroom.
The outing comes days after Trump revealed that the project was going to be bigger than he originally planned, after he decided to make it a bulletproof venue with a “drone-free roof” to host future inauguration events.
The cost of the ballroom has also soared to $400 million—double the original price tag—despite Trump insisting last week that the project is still somehow “under budget”.
“It’s bigger than I told you,” he revealed to reporters during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
“You know, after realizing we’re going to do the inauguration in that building, it’s got all bulletproof glass. It’s got, they call it, drone-free roof. Drones won’t touch it. It’s a big, beautiful, safe building. But it’s a big project.”
Trump has made no secret of his obsession with his planned ballroom – or with marble.
Last week, the president took to social media to tease marble armrests for seating at the newly rebranded Trump-Kennedy Center, and also showed off the new marbleized floors of White House’s Palm Room.
During his speech at the Kennedy Center Honors Dinner earlier this month, the president also boasted to his audience about the “beautiful” Paradiso marble he installed in the newly renovated Lincoln Bathroom of the White House.
“People said, ‘Oh, why is he wasting time?’” he told the crowd.
“That’s not wasting time, that’s saving our heritage. You know, many, many things like that, it’s saving the heritage of this country.”
But many remain unconvinced by Trump’s vanity projects, noting that the President on a promise to bring down grocery prices and cost-of-living pressures for Americans – not to rebuild Washington in his own image.
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod accused Trump of having “Marie Antoinette thing” going on.
“People are saying to themselves, ‘What the hell does that have to do with me? I thought he was going to be fighting for me to bring my costs down?’” he told CNN.
Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove went even further in a Wall Street Journal opinion column, arguing that while Trump “might receive a fawning reaction from his MAGA base,” the average American “finds such narcissism off-putting.”
Since returning to power, Trump has decked the Oval Office in gold, paved over the Rose Garden with drab concrete, and taken petty swipes at his adversaries in a newly installed “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the West Wing Colonnade.
But the White House ballroom is likely to be his biggest legacy project yet, ballooning from its $200 million price tag in July to an estimated $400 million now.
The new ballroom will be privately funded by Trump and various billionaire donors, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir, many of whom currently benefit from lucrative government contracts or government deregulation.
Earlier this month, the Daily Beast revealed that the ever-expanding project would sit on the second floor of a new two-story building, with a multi-level passageway connecting it to the president’s primary residence.
The new building would also feature monumental stairs, guest suites, executive offices, and a new visitor entrance to the White House with expanded interpretive areas.
It is expected to be completed in late 2028, with some streets around the White House closed until then to make way for construction.
The details were hidden in government documents submitted in court as part of an unsuccessful legal challenge by the National Trust Preservation Committee, which had sought to halt construction until a “legally mandated review process” could take place.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever—not President Trump, not President Biden, not anyone else,” the group had argued.
But U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ultimately denied the Trust’s request for a temporary restraining order. However, he said he would hear arguments early this year about whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction against the project.
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