President Donald Trump had just begun a Jan. 9 meeting at the White House with oil and gas executives when he paused, stood and walked to a window to admire his construction project.
“This is the door to the ballroom,” the president said, gesturing at the future entrance to the planned $400 million addition to the White House. Trump touted the project for about 90 seconds, extolling the ballroom’s features, before resuming a discussion of how to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry and lower global energy prices.
The interruption was the first moment this year when the president publicly riffed on his pet project. It was far from the last. Trump has invoked the ballroom on about a third of the days this year, according to a Washington Post analysis of his public remarks and social media posts, a pace that rivals and even exceeds his mentions of some major policy priorities. He has mentioned the project on fewer days this year than topics such as tariffs and Iran but on about as many days as he has mentioned health insurance and “affordability.”
Trump’s invocations of the ballroom, which he has said presidents need to entertain VIP guests, also significantly surpass his mentions of the TrumpRx website that his administration introduced to help Americans shop for cheaper prescription drugs. He has cast the project as a patriotic gift to future presidents and Americans, pushing to complete it before his term ends and investing his focus at a politically precarious time for his administration.
“Due to time constraints, I will barely get to use it!” Trump wrote on social media last week.
The ballroom has assumed more of Trump’s attention as the year has gone along, and particularly as the project faces legal challenges that are poised to halt construction. In April, for instance, the president has issued more posts about the ballroom on his Truth Social platform than about tariffs — Trump’s signature economic policy.
On Thursday, the president took to Truth Social to complain about the federal judge who ordered a stop to the project until Trump receives congressional authorization, complain again about the judge, complain about the plaintiff, and then complain about the judge one more time — yielding nearly 800 words of invective, all told. Then, within minutes, Trump shared all four posts again.
“Every Political ‘Pundit’ has said this case is meritless, even a JOKE, but it’s not a joke to me, or the people of America,” Trump wrote in one of his attacks on the “Trump Hating Judge” who paused the project.
The ballroom has been a priority for Trump’s opponents, too. Democrats have used the project as a line of attack ahead of the midterms, casting it as a symbol of misplaced priorities.
“While Democrats are focused on the affordability crisis, there are plenty of Republicans who agree with Trump that our priorities should be gilded ballrooms, Great Gatsby parties and more tax cuts for the oligarchs and crypto grifters,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) told The Post.
Asked about Trump’s focus on the ballroom, a White House spokesman touted the use of private donations to pay for the project and dismissed critics as being politically motivated.
“President Trump is making the White House beautiful and giving it the glory it deserves at no cost to the taxpayer — all while continuing to add new tranches of discounted prescription drugs on TrumpRx.gov, cut burdensome red tape, and push the Great Healthcare Plan to deliver more healthcare affordability for the American people,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “President Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time, and only individuals with severe Trump Derangement Syndrome fail to see this.”
The project is broadly unpopular. Fifty-eight percent of Americans said they opposed tearing down the East Wing to build the ballroom, according to an Economist-YouGov poll in February. Trump’s political advisers have encouraged him to focus on topics such as lowering the cost of health care ahead of this year’s midterms.
But the ballroom keeps coming up, driven by Trump’s deep interest in construction — as a longtime real estate magnate — and his belief that the White House addition is overdue. Trump claims he pitched President Barack Obama’s advisers on the project more than a decade ago but said they rebuffed him.
“I told David Axelrod: ‘David, I will build a ballroom, free of charge, at least $100 million. We’ll make it the finest ballroom in the world.’” Trump said at a January 2016 campaign appearance in Iowa. “I never heard back.”
In recent weeks, Trump has shown off renderings to reporters on Air Force One, invoked the project in meetings with foreign leaders and interrupted speeches to extol it.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll walk over there and look for a little while, then I’ll come back and I’ll continue to speak,” Trump joked to farmers gathered on the White House’s South Lawn for an event last month, as two tower cranes whirred and pivoted a few hundred feet away.
He also invoked the project at an Easter lunch this month, after telling attendees about his decision to set up a White House faith office last year.
“A lot of people wanted the office they’re in, it’s very valuable real estate,” Trump said, before shifting to a favorite topic and gesturing at the wall behind him. “We’re building a valuable piece of real estate right back here. … It’s going to be amazing.”
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