Stack it up in one-dollar notes and you’d get a pile tall enough to soar past 11 Mount Everests sitting on top of each other, reaching into outer space.
That’s the absurd truth of the $927 million that Donald Trump, 80, plans to spend in his vainglorious crusade to remake the White House in his own image, according to figures reviewed by The Washington Post. Those numbers do not include MAGAfied pet projects elsewhere in the D.C. area, like the president’s disastrous Reflecting Pool renovation or his planned 250-foot “Triumphal Arch.”
They instead cover the cost of the tacky new ballroom he is constructing at the site where the White House’s historic East Wing once stood. They also cover him paving over the Rose Garden, installing a helipad on the South Lawn, upgrades to Lafayette Square, and a proposed screening facility for visitors beside Sherman Park.
That price tag is far higher than anything previously made public, and the Post found most of it would fall to taxpayers, rather than donors, as Trump has claimed. The records show the administration routed the money through the Executive Residence, the office that maintains the president’s private home and employs fewer than 100 housekeepers, curators, calligraphers, and carpenters. It has never run a major construction job.
It is also exempt from the disclosure rules that cover most federal agencies, which keeps its contracts out of public view. Congress gives the office $2.5 million a year for repairs. Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has steered $875 million into its accounts.
“That is incredibly unusual,” Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for the advocacy group Protect Democracy, told the Post. The group is suing the administration over what it says is the withholding of public spending information.
The money came from three places. Trump administration budget officials authorized $500 million in transfers from the Secret Service and the White House Military Office. Another $305 million came from private donors. The source of a further $70 million is not identified in the documents.
Most of the $415 million kicked in by the Secret Service landed in the Executive Residence account in June. That was immediately after Trump’s allies in Congress failed to pass legislation handing his White House renovations $400 million.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story. Officials refused to tell the Post where all the money came from or what the total bill will be. It said the funds are being spent in a manner consistent with what Congress intended.
“Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, the White House will be properly glorified,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement shared with the Beast.
The White House makeover is only one aspect of Trump’s MAGAfying rampage across the nation’s capital. The Kennedy Center is getting a $257 million overhaul, funded through Trump’s tax and spending measures, while donors are reportedly kicking in $100 million for the 250-foot arch planned to rise above Memorial Circle near Arlington National Cemetery.
His “American flag blue” renovation of the Reflecting Pool, meanwhile, has run taxpayers north of $16 million and so far succeeded only in turning the landmark’s waters a hideous, slime-green before they were drained again. Trump has blamed vandals and is currently trying to revive legal action against a former Olympic canoeist his Justice Department has tried and failed to prosecute over the snafu.
