President Donald Trump hosted a lavish fundraiser to support his $250 million White House ballroom Wednesday evening, brushing aside the atmosphere of bitter partisan gridlock brought on by the U.S. government shutdown to wine and dine his wealthy guests.
Trump invited dozens of donors helping to bankroll the under-construction ballroom with gold-lettered invitations. In attendance were representatives from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Palantir Technologies, according to a guest list seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who donated to Trump’s 2024 campaign and stands to gain from his energy policies, was also there, as were Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, the cryptocurrency impresarios and MAGA Inc PAC donors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Trump’s Small Business Administration boss Kelly Loeffler and the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“We have a lot of legends in the room tonight, and that’s why we’re here to celebrate you because you’ve given tremendous amounts of money to see a ballroom built for the first time at the White House,” Trump told his guests.
“The White House, for 150 years-plus they’ve wanted to have a ballroom and it never happened because they’ve never had a real estate person.”
Construction got underway last month on the 90,000 square foot ballroom, which will be able to accommodate 650 seated guests once completed, a huge increase from the current 200-seat capacity of the East Room making it large enough to “hold the inauguration,” in the president’s words. The total footprint of the White House, exluding its East and West Wing, is estimated at 55,000 square feet.
Trump is understood to regard interior design as “relaxing” and consider the ballroom a key component of his presidential legacy, along with the other redevelopment projects he has taken on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since returning to power, such as the revamping of the Rose Garden into a tiled patio resembling one at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.
He reportedly pitched a larger ballroom to the Barack Obama administration, even offering to pay for it himself, only for the proposal to be declined.
Clearly the idea stayed with him and the White House duly announced in late July that Trump and “other patriot donors” had committed $200M towards finally realizing his dream.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, paid out $22M – expected to put towards ballroom construction – as part of a 2021 lawsuit settlement after Trump sued the company for suspending his YouTube account in the wake of the Jan 6 riot, the WSJ previously reported.
The president’s glitzy celebration with America’s rich and powerful came amid the ongoing government shutdown, now into its 16th day, which has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay.
Democrats have compared the president to Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, who became a symbol of selfish luxury as her public went hungry, sparking the French Revolution.
“This administration’s slogan should be ‘Let them eat cake,’” said Rosemary Boeglin, communications director for the Democratic National Committee. “Trump is busy wining and dining with his rich friends and wealthy donors while failing to make a deal to end the government shutdown.
“Instead of trading cash for access, Trump and his Republican loyalists in Congress should be getting back to work to reopen the government and avoid a healthcare crisis that would force millions of Americans to pay even more for health care or lose coverage completely.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, known for ruthlessly trolling the president online, wrote on X: “The government is shutdown and the President is hosting press conferences about a ballroom.”
“I didn't know draining the swamp meant Donald Trump building a $200 million ballroom for billionaires to bend the knee for special favors,” wrote Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, spoke of the pressure the A-list companies and individuals attending the gala must feel from the president.
“Every company that is invited to that dinner that either doesn’t show or doesn’t give knows now they will be out of favor with the Trump administration,” she told the WSJ.
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