An analysis suggests President Donald Trump has become consumed by his ballroom vanity project while key policy issues take a back seat.
The 79-year-old president has returned to the topic of the $400 million ballroom he is building for himself on the site of the demolished White House East Wing on roughly a third of the days this year, according to a Washington Post analysis of his public remarks and social media posts.
The former real estate developer has mentioned his vanity project more frequently than topics such as tariffs, the war with Iran, and the TrumpRx website launched to help Americans shop for cheaper prescription drugs, according to the Post.
And as Americans grapple with rising costs and inflation, the ballroom has effectively gone toe-to-toe with health insurance and “affordability” in Trump’s public remarks, appearing on about as many days.
On Thursday alone, Trump devoted nearly 800 words across four Truth Social posts to his ballroom, lashing out at Judge Richard Leon after the George W. Bush appointee ordered work on the project to be halted until Trump secures congressional authorization.
“The White House doesn’t have a Ballroom (No Taxpayer Money!), which Presidents have desperately wanted and desired for over 150 years, but a Trump Hating, Washington, D.C. District Court Judge, a man who has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built, is attempting to prevent future Presidents and World Leaders from having a safe and secure large scale Meeting Place, or Ballroom,” Trump raged, in part.
The president has maintained that the ballroom’s $400 million price tag will be “privately funded” by his billionaire friends, and has pitched the overwhelmingly unpopular project as a gift to future presidents, writing on Thursday that he will “barely get to use it.”
The ballroom’s gravitational pull on Trump was on display in January during a high-stakes meeting with almost two dozen global oil executives on Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, where the president suddenly walked over to a window in the East Room to gaze at the construction of the 90,000-square-foot hall.
“Wow!” he said, staring at the dirt and rubble that was once the historic East Wing of the White House. “What a view.”
In his statement to the Washington Post, White House spokesman Davis Ingle appeared to try to make up for the lack of emphasis on the administration’s policy priorities amid the president’s ballroom obsession.
“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,” Ingle said. “President Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time, and only individuals with severe Trump Derangement Syndrome fail to see this.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
