Congressional allies of President Donald Trump are defending his planned White House ballroom and resisting any notion that Congress should formally prohibit taxpayer funds flowing to the pricey project.
A firestorm of backlash emerged last month when the president ordered the entire East Wing of the White House demolished to make way for his 90,000-square-foot event and office space facility. As loud drilling from the ballroom construction site echoed around the White House grounds on Monday, several polls brought bad news for Trump and Republicans.
Trump’s approval rating tumbled to 37 percent, a record low, with 63 percent disapproving of his job performance, according to a CNN-SSRS survey conducted Oct. 27-30 — after he ordered the entire East Wing demolished without any notice to the public or Congress. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 24-28 put his approval rating higher, 41 percent, against a disapproval rating of 59 percent. But on his handling of the economy, 62 percent disapproved versus 37 percent who approved.
But inside the Beltway, official Washington has since begun to accept that not even Congress appears to have the legal standing to block the $300 million facility, which is set to rival the size of an on-campus college sports arena at 90,000 square feet, dwarfing the 50,000-square-foot White House.
Asked about a need for legislative language blocking federal funds to build the ballroom, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., replied: “I don’t think he’s using taxpayer money, is he?” Blumenthal then said he would support language that would “mandate a review of whatever happens to the White House, whether that’s by appropriations or otherwise.”
The president and his top spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, have both vowed in recent months that construction of the expensive building would be paid in full by Trump himself, as well as corporations and wealthy individual donors.
Some of Trump’s closest backers on Capitol Hill last week rejected any need for lawmakers to safeguard taxpayer funds and defended the contentious project as just another political ploy by Democrats desperate to deflect blame over the ongoing government shutdown.
“I haven’t seen [a need] for anything like that. The president’s already said … it’s not going to need any taxpayer money,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. “And he’s not.”
Another close Trump ally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said last week that if any president “wants to make changes, then I don’t think you should be able to use taxpayer money unless it’s authorized here — and unless they show a need.”
But Tuberville said he also does not see a need for ballroom-specific legislation or language, arguing that Trump had told some congressional allies about his plans even before he won a second term last November.
“But, you know, he told me a year ago he was going to do this because he saw the need,” Tuberville said. “We can’t have any kind of big foreign relations get-togethers there with a state dinner, because we don’t have anything large enough,” he said.
Several administrations have built large temporary structures on the White House’s spacious South Lawn for big events, a practice Trump and his surrogates have panned as beneath the office since he announced his ballroom plan earlier this year.
“That’s not the American way. So I think it’s important that we have something [else],” Tuberville said. “So I’m glad he’s able to raise the money and pay for it, and taxpayers don’t want to pay for it.”
On the House side, Republican leaders also have defended the ballroom project. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., last week criticized Democrats for criticizing a privately funded White House renovation amid a government shutdown.
“There’s a nonpartisan government funding bill waiting in the Senate to be sent to President Trump’s desk immediately,” Emmer said. “Put an end to the madness, do the right and reasonable thing that you did back in March, by the way, and vote ‘yes’ on our clean CR.
“Instead of complaining about a new White House ballroom, how about you try doing your actual job and reopen the government for the people you were elected to serve,” he added.
Notably, as some of Trump’s allies defended the project, the president’s approval rating among independent voters was at 30 percent, according to the Post-ABC poll — with 69 percent expressing disapproval.
‘Have to be investigated’
One senior House Democrat last week countered with a letter to each company on a ballroom donor list released by the White House.
“Today, there is a gaping hole in the side of the White House, and no one in the White House has been honest with Americans about the construction plans or the costs,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee. “As you are hopefully aware, the White House does not belong to President Trump, or any temporary occupant for that matter. It belongs to the American public.”
“The White House is a treasured symbol of our democracy, and the President has begun to demolish part of it with funds your company contributed,” Thompson added in the letter, which asked each company a number of questions about its donation. “You owe Americans an explanation.”
Thompson’s criticism of the East Wing demolition and pressure on the corporate donors came as a YouGov-Economist poll released last week found that 61 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Trump’s East Wing demolition. Among the key independent voter bloc, 19 percent approved of tearing down the east side of the executive compound.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Oct. 22 told MSNBC that Democrats want to investigate the ballroom project, suggesting the large donations could cause Trump to do favors to those who threw in on the ballroom construction.
“It’s highly doubtful that [the demolition] is legal. We haven’t been able to find any congressional authority for it or any executive authority,” Jeffries told the network. “And, more likely, this is part of what Donald Trump has been doing since Day One of his presidency: running the largest pay-to-play scheme in the history of the country, and probably soliciting donations from people who’ve got business before the United States government.
“And all of this is going to have to be investigated. It will. All of this will have to be uncovered. It will. And these people are going to be held accountable — no matter how long it takes. That’s going to be the reality of the situation,” he added. “And that’s our warning to all of these people participating in this, scheming to manipulate taxpayer dollars and, of course, to destroy the ‘People’s House.’ The White House belongs to the American people. It doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.”
White House officials released a list of donors last month but did not include how much each company and individual forked over. What’s more, some donors were completely omitted from the list — including corporations with business pending before the Trump administration, according to a New York Times report.
Other senior congressional Democrats have used the ballroom to argue that Trump and Republicans care little about Americans being financially and otherwise hit hard by the government shutdown.
House Minority Whip Katherine M. Clark, D-Mass., during a Democrats-only hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, said Trump and congressional Republicans were “deliberately withholding funding from SNAP, dismantling Head Start, defunding Medicaid, hiking ACA premiums, closing more hospitals and making life harder and more expensive while Trump gets a ballroom, Bezos gets a yacht, and crypto billions get a burden and a tax break to go with it.”
“It is cruel and it is corrupt, and it disproportionately hurts two groups of people: one, the most vulnerable, the sick, and the disabled, our seniors; and two, it disproportionately hurts communities represented by Republicans,” Clark added.
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., used part of his opening statement at a Wednesday hearing to call out Trump over the ballroom.
“Just days away from open enrollment, what are Republicans focused on? Building Trump’s ballroom and bailing out a foreign country while families go hungry while [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent cosplays as a soybean farmer,” Wyden said.
“The Finance Committee could be working to keep health care affordable to make sure people don’t lose their coverage,” he said. “Instead, it’s been silent. You can practically see tumbleweeds rolling across the floor of the House of Representatives, where [Speaker] Mike Johnson has given everyone a six-week vacation.”
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