Donald Trump has released a new rendering of his beloved White House ballroom – and has tried to spin the size of the monstrosity in the process.
Trump, 79, posted excitedly on Truth Social about the project that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted last year was the commander-in-chief’s “main priority.”
The ballroom “replaces the very small, dilapidated, and rebuilt many times, East Wing, with a magnificent New East Wing, consisting of a glorious Ballroom that has been asked for by Presidents for over 150 years,” Trump claimed, without naming any of his predecessors.
“Being an identical height and scale, it is totally in keeping with our historic White House,” he claimed.
But the Executive Residence, according to the White House Historical Association, is 55,000 square feet. Trump’s ballroom is planned to be 90,000 square feet. The West Wing, meanwhile, is less than half the size of the ballroom: about 40,000 square feet.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
“This is the first rendering shown to the Public,” Trump continued. “If you notice, the North Wall is a replica of the North Facade of the White House, shown at the right hand side of the picture. This space will serve our Country well for, hopefully, Centuries into the future!”
Trump is reportedly planning on naming the ballroom after himself, just as he has been slapping his name on other Washington, D.C. buildings like the Kennedy Center, for which he just announced a “complete rebuilding.”
The ballroom, whose construction is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has an estimated cost of $400 million. That amount, which Trump revealed in December, is double its initial pricetag.
Donors to the controversial project, CNN reported in October, included tech giants, defense contractors, cryptocurrency investors, and media conglomerates—individuals and groups who could stand to gain from Trump’s transactional operating habits.
As part of the preservation group’s lawsuit, the National Park Service acknowledged how odd the massive ballroom would look in comparison to the rest of the grounds, which it manages.
The ballroom would “dominate the eastern portion of the site, creating a visual imbalance with the more modestly scaled West Wing and Executive Mansion,” the group said in a December court filing.
Trump’s anticipation of the ballroom hasn’t just resulted in boastful social media posts. Last month, he oddly got up from a meeting with nearly two dozen oil executives to gaze out the window at where his ballroom was set to be built.
“Wow, what a view,” he said of the construction site.
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