Donald Trump has recategorized his vanity ballroom project as a key military asset—with a risk of “death and destruction” if his full vision isn’t approved and funded.
Following Tuesday’s revelation that a “drone empire” and sniper station will be housed on the roof of the ballroom, Trump raged on Truth Social Sunday: “The DronePort at the White House Ballroom will be, perhaps, the most sophisticated anywhere in the World!
“It will safeguard our Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., long into the future.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon—in conjunction with the National Trust—temporarily ordered aboveground construction of the ballroom to be halted awaiting congressional approval. According to Trump, blood will be on his hands.
“Judge Richard Leon should stop playing games with America’s Security!,” he wrote. “If anything happens, he will be held responsible for the Death and Destruction caused to our Country.”
Trump included yet another rant against a dog-walking woman with “no standing” who supposedly raised the lawsuit against the ballroom, and concluded: “With the advent of highly sophisticated, and powerful, modern day weaponry, we can no longer defend Washington, D.C., with rifles and pistols, alone.”
While the ballroom was initially a $100 million project involving the destruction of the East Wing in order to create an area for visitors to the White House, it has quickly spiraled.
The project has since ballooned into a $400 million undertaking funded by private donors, and was quietly folded into an immigration enforcement bill that would have unlocked up to $1 billion in public funding before the measure was defeated earlier this month.
Trump has now presented the completion of the ballroom as a matter of national security, explaining that it will be drone-proof and will include bunkers, a military hospital, and a research facility.
The president and his MAGA cronies have jumped on the WHCA dinner attack and last week’s shooting outside the White House as clear examples that the lawsuit against the ballroom needs to be dropped.
In a Justice Department court filing submitted after the May 2023 shooting, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche argued that the incident “underscores the critical need for top-level, state-of-the-art security at the White House,” including the proposed ballroom, which he described as “an integrated, unified component of the East Wing Project” that is “vital to national security.”
