President Donald Trump reportedly brushed off concerns by his former architect that the White House ballroom lacked some basic safety features despite repeated warnings, and stunned critics argued that would be a valid pretext for the next president to tear it down.
The 80-year-old president was told multiple times by architect James McCrery II that his preferred design – which he personally enlarged using a Sharpie marker over professional sketches – would take up the entire width of the second floor, while others marked out service stairs and changed which way doors should swing, reported the Washington Post.
McCrery warned that most guests could not quickly leave through the main entrance in an emergency under that design, the Post reported, and he also said the other exits were insufficient and that little would stop a kitchen fire from spreading into the event space directly above.
One early design had just seven stalls in the women’s restroom for a ballroom that eventually grew to seat more than 1,300 people.
The newspaper obtained White House meeting notes from Sept. 30, 2025, that read, “Life safety — big concern,” while notes from a Nov. 6 meeting, held after McCrery left, read, “Life safety — needs POTUS buy in.”
The Post could not determine whether a code review was ever completed, but two sources told the newspaper that Trump argued with McCrery before his departure, saying, “I am the code.”
The reports called Trump’s skills and experience as a builder into question and prompted onlookers to describe the ballroom as a “death trap.”
“Le code, c’est moi,” quipped The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn.
“Donald Trump is stealing taxpayer dollars to destroy the White House and replace it with a firetrap,” observed legal analyst Marcy Wheeler.
“Nice of Trump to give the future Democratic president a valid excuse to tear down his sh-tass ballroom by refusing to allow it to be built to code,” pointed out media studies professor Daniel Gilmore.
“I know some people are ambivalent or hostile to the idea of stopping the ballroom or tearing it up, but if you watched the Reflecting Pool debacle, you would have known the chance for shoddy work that needs to be torn up and redone ANYWAY was always the likely outcome,” argued conservative commentator Amanda Carpenter. “And, here we go. Corruption sucks; it always leads to crappy outcomes for taxpayers, and the bunker ballroom is our next example.”
“You’re paying for $6 million in gold leaf for Trump’s ballroom/fire trap,” noted writer Joe Flood.
“People might want to look into the safety of his NY properties,” suggested WFAN’s Paul Arzooman.
“As a developer, Trump hated the regulations that called for making buildings handicapped accessible,” recalled history professor Richard E. Frankel. “Because he’s such a wonderful human being.”
“During his 2016 campaign Trump repeatedly complained about local fire marshals disallowing more people into his events — including at a ballroom in Roanoke,” remembered HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney.
“As I said, he doesn’t plan on leaving no matter what,” opined The Philadelphia Tribune’s O.J. Spivey.
“Fellas, are fire and safety codes woke?” asked defense analyst John Ridge.
“This is mordantly funny,” sighed illustrator David Bowman. “The ‘Liberace Führerbunker’ is going to literally be a death trap. That is, presuming the stupid thing is ever completed.”
“In the great tradition of Coconut Grove, the Beverly Hills Supper Club…jfc,” agreed writer Jack Womack.
“‘We’re all gonna die, and there aren’t enough bathrooms!’” croaked Bluesky user Kip Williams.
The post Trump accused of building ‘death trap’ at White House appeared first on Raw Story.
