The original plan for Donald Trump’s White House ballroom vanity project was to spend $200 million, and every penny would come from private donations. Three months later, the price tag grew to $250 million. Soon after, it was $300 million. Late last year, it was up to $400 million — though again the official line was that American taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for the costs at all, even as the White House went out of its way to hide the identities of donors.
This week, however, everything changed: Congressional Republicans unveiled a budget reconciliation package, which Democrats would be powerless to stop, that set aside $1 billion in taxpayer funds for the ballroom project with the costs to be added to the budget deficit.
On Wednesday morning, the president used his social media platform to present a defense of sorts. The online piece read, in part:
The only reason the cost has changed is because, after deep rooted studies, it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal, which would not have been adequate to handle the necessary events, meetings, and even future Inaugurations. … It will be magnificent, safe, and secure!
Or, as New York magazine’s Nia Prater summarized, Trump wants the public to believe the ballroom will cost more “because it’s more awesome.”
A White House official told MS NOW the project will still be paid for with the private funds already raised and that the $1 billion will be used to “better secure the White House complex.”
That might sound vaguely compelling, were it not for the legislative text of the GOP bill that specifically says the $1 billion in public funds would be used for the “East Wing Modernization Project.” (The East Wing of the White House was recently destroyed, to be replaced by Trump’s vanity project.)
As Wednesday progressed, a “PBS NewsHour” correspondent asked the president about the disconnect between his ballroom and the problem of American consumers struggling with the cost of living.
“No, we need it. We need it,” the Republican replied. “No, no, it’s a tiny — it’s one one-millionth of a percent of what we do. That’s a small deal. And I’m putting up a lot of money myself. So, you know, it’s largely financed by me. … I’m putting up 100, I’m putting up $400 million.”
To date, the White House has presented no evidence to suggest that the project will be “largely” financed by the president. Similarly, there’s no available information about why Trump sought so many private donations if he’s “putting up $400 million” toward construction.
Hours after talking to PBS, the president claimed at a White House event that the ballroom project “really has become very popular.” The latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, released last week, showed 2-to-1 opposition to the project, and the question in that survey emphasized private financing.
As for why Trump tried to bring criminal charges against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over cost overruns at the Fed’s building renovation project, even as he confronts similar overruns in the costs of his ballroom, the White House hasn’t addressed this contradiction, either.
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