President Donald Trump kicked off a high-stakes meeting with almost two dozen global oil executives by wandering off to admire construction on his White House ballroom.
The bizarre moment took place after the 79-year-old president sat down to welcome the leaders of companies such as Chevron, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips as part of a critical effort to rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure and control its oil exports.
But it didn’t take long for Trump to veer off-script and turn his attention to his pet vanity project.
“Today I’m delighted to welcome almost two dozen of the biggest and most respected oil and gas executives in the world to the White House,” he began.
“We had many others that were not able to get in. I said: If we had a ballroom, we’d have over 1,000 people. Everybody wanted [to come]. I never knew your industry was that big. I never knew you had that many people for industry, but here we are.”
Trump then turned his head around to a window and door behind him.
“In fact, if you look, come to think of it… I’ve gotta look at this myself,” he said, before getting up suddenly.
As Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio smiled in bemusement, the president wandered over to the window and then gazed out at the construction site where his ballroom is being built.
“Wow!” he said, staring at the dirt and rubble that was once the historic East Wing of the White House. “What a view.”
Trump’s admiration for his ballroom comes a day after it was revealed that the president is considering building a one-story addition to the West Wing of the White House—despite previously declaring that the project would “not interfere” with the existing main building.
He also plans to make his ballroom as tall as the White House’s main mansion itself, chief architect Shalom Baranes said on Thursday, in a move that would break from the long-standing tradition that requires additions to be shorter than the main building.
But at the oil meeting on Friday, Trump boasted about the ever-expanding scope of the project, telling his guests it would also be used for inaugurations after bulletproof glass and a “drone-proof” roof were added to the design.
“We’re ahead of schedule on the ballroom and under budget,” he told the CEOs, despite the reported $400 million project now costing double what it was estimated to be in July.
“I don’t think there will be anything like it in the world, actually,” Trump said.
The rest of the meeting was a much more serious affair, designed to pressure oil companies to pour billions of dollars into tapping the country’s vast oil reserves.
Less than a week after capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Trump has laid out a strategy to sell millions of barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil and control the proceeds himself while building out additional production capacity.
However, that strategy will rely on major investment from American companies to revitalize Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure—and most of the companies represented at the White House on Friday stopped short of making pledges to quickly invest.
Exxon CEO Darren Woods, for instance, said Venezuela is currently uninvestable without significant changes to the country’s commercial frameworks and the legal system.
But Trump told the group that he wanted American oil companies to spend at least $100 billion in the country to boost oil production.
“If you don’t want to go in, just let me know because I’ve got 25 people that aren’t here today who are willing to take your place,” he said.
The post Trump, 79, Wanders Off to Gaze at Nonexistent Building appeared first on The Daily Beast.
