Shortly after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where an armed gunman attempted to breach the event, Donald Trump held an unexpected event in the press briefing room, presumably to offer an update to the public about the evening’s developments.
The president spoke for roughly half an hour, though it was just two minutes into his unscripted remarks when he decided to focus on a specific priority. Combatting gun violence? Addressing the toxic political environment? No, Trump told the assembled reporters, “I didn’t want to say this, but … we need the ballroom.”
To the extent that the White House believed it received a sudden boost in political capital in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the president decided to aggressively invest that capital into the ballroom vanity project that he’s obsessed over for months.
Indeed, the Republican spoke of little else the day after what transpired, lobbying in support of his proposed White House ballroom by way of his social media platform, a phone interview with Fox News on Sunday morning, followed by related comments to CBS News hours later.
The substantive case can charitably be described as underwhelming. Even if the ballroom existed, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner wouldn’t be held there. As an MS NOW report explained, “The president is an invitee, not the host of the annual dinner. Not to mention it would be a conflict of interest for such an event to be held at the White House.”
For that matter, Trump routinely attends other public events and gatherings — UFC bouts, football games, political rallies, frequent golf outings, et al. — leaving little doubt that it’s possible for the president to attend events outside of a massive, fortified ballroom on the White House complex.
But as part of his campaign, Trump specifically condemned the ongoing lawsuit challenging the legality of his construction project, writing online, “The ridiculous Ballroom lawsuit, brought by a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit, must be dropped, immediately. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with with [sic] its construction.”
Trump’s Justice Department evidently noticed. From the MS NOW report:
[T]he Justice Department demanded the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop its lawsuit against the construction of the ballroom.
‘When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom,’ [the DOJ] asserted in a letter Sunday.
In the same one-page letter, Brett Shumate, the DOJ Civil Division’s assistant attorney general, added, “Put simply, your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk. … Enough is enough.”
He demanded the National Trust for Historic Preservation “voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump. If your client does not dismiss the lawsuit by 9:00 AM on Monday, the government will move to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case in light of last night’s extraordinary events.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former Trump defense lawyer who appears a little too eager to try to make the president happy, quickly threw his support behind the effort.
For what it’s worth, the idea that Trump’s legally dubious renovation priority is necessary to prevent putting the first family “at grave risk” is difficult to take seriously. What’s more, the idea that it’s the Justice Department’s job to tell private litigants, “Enough is enough,” because the president doesn’t want to be inconvenienced by the legal process, is even more dubious.
We didn’t necessarily need fresh evidence of Main Justice acting like an extension of the Oval Office and the president’s wishes, but Shumate and Blanche offered up a new example on Sunday anyway.
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