President Donald Trump said he didn’t need to raze the White House’s East Wing to build his tacky new ballroom—yet he did it anyway.
Trump has faced widespread condemnation for demolishing the historic East Wing of the presidential mansion without proper permits, oversight, or public buy-in.
During an interview with Fox News on Monday night, he finally admitted he doesn’t care about any of that.
The president, 79, told host Laura Ingraham that he knocked down the East Wing because it “looked like hell.”
“It was a poor, sad sight, and I could’ve built the ballroom around it,” he added.
Trump’s comments came during a series of feisty exchanges with Ingraham, 62. The Fox News host had asked him about former first lady Michelle Obama’s criticism of the East Wing’s destruction.
Trump replied: “First of all, the East Wing was a beautiful little, tiny structure that was built many years ago, that was renovated and expanded and despanded (sic) and columns ripped out. It had nothing to do with the original building.”
Ingraham then asked about reports that Melania Trump, who had her office in the East Wing, also “didn’t love this idea. Is that true?”
Trump replied: “She loved her little, tiny office, but you know what? She’s very smart. In about one day, she—if you would ask her now, she says it’s great.”
He added: “The East Wing sounds good, right? It sounds good. But the East Wing, that building was renovated 20 times, including adding a floor to the top, which was terrible. It was out of common brick, little tiny windows, it looked like hell.”
Trump concluded he didn’t want to “sacrifice a great ballroom for an OK ballroom by leaving it right smack in the middle,” claiming that it would—of course—be “one of the greatest ballrooms in the world, and I built a lot of them.”
He added, “By the way, zero money spent by the government. Zero.” While it is unclear precisely who is paying what for the $300 million ballroom, many of the companies contributing to the cost reportedly already hold significant government contracts.
Trump has made the ballroom a recurring obsession. A White House July 31 release put the venue at roughly 90,000 square feet with seating for 650, designed by McCrery Architects and built by Clark Construction, with officials claiming it would be operational “long before the end of President Trump’s term.”
But the project’s estimated price tag has surged to $300 million or more after demolition teams moved in. And when Ingraham ribbed him over whether some new gold Oval Office flourishes were “from Home Depot,” Trump shot back, “Nah, this is not Home Depot stuff.”
But Trump’s Fox News sit-down ranged far beyond interiors. Ingraham, who has historically been a friendly interviewer for the president, challenged Trump on his pitch for 50-year mortgages and why Americans still feel squeezed economically during his presidency.
Trump shrugged off the anxiety, saying, “I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we ever had,” and blamed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying, “he’s going to be gone in a few months.”
The president also floated a $10,000 “bonus” for air traffic controllers who continued working through the government shutdown. When Ingraham asked where the money would come from, Trump answered: “I will get it from some place… it doesn’t matter.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
