US Politics
Ballroom blitz: Trump makes around a dozen online posts pushing for his beloved White House event space
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President Donald Trump bombarded his Truth Social followers with posts about his under-construction White House ballroom Monday, attempting to keep up the pressure and ensure his pet project goes ahead.
The president posted the same clip of MAGA pundit Jack Posobiec appearing on Fox News to promote the annex twice, as well as at least eight posts consisting of screenshots of comments from prominent conservatives backing the ballroom after it was stalled by a lawsuit.
The screenshots rounded up some 42 comments from the likes of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Republican senators Rand Paul, Kate Britt, Rick Scott, Marsha Blackburn, rebel Democrat John Fetterman, GOP representatives Lauren Boebert and Randy Fine, and right-leaning influencers like Libs of TikTok, all of whom demanded the function room be completed.
Overground building work on the project has been halted since U.S. District Judge Richard Leon sided with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in a lawsuit last month seeking to block it, the justice ruling that construction could not continue without congressional authorization.
The trust has come under pressure from the Department of Justice to drop its suit following the attack on the White House Correspondent’s Dinner on April 25 but has so far refused to budge.
“We are not planning to voluntarily dismiss our lawsuit, which endangers no one and which respectfully asks the administration to follow the law,” its president and CEO Carol Quillen said last week.
The $400 million cost of the ballroom was set to be met by wealthy private donors but new legislation put forward last week by a group of GOP senators led by Lindsey Graham would see the expense fall on beleaguered American taxpayers instead, if passed.
Trump has insisted a lavish space for hosting great occasions of state has been badly needed at the White House for decades and unceremoniously demolished the East Wing offices of the first lady last year to make it a reality.
However, his enthusiasm is not shared by the general public, with a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll finding that just 28 percent of people support it.
Fifty-six percent of respondents to the survey said they opposed the development and another 16 percent were unsure, those numbers not changing since the question was last posed in October.
Trump’s other posts on his social media platform Monday addressed current events like Iran’s aggression towards his Project Freedom initiative, which is attempting to guide oil ships through the Strait of Hormuz to ease the spike in global fuel prices.
He also wished his former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani a swift return to health after he was hospitalized with pneumonia and posted a meme of outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell being tossed into a skip, continuing their public feud over Powell’s refusal to shift interest rates in accordance with Trump’s wishes.
Bizarrely, the president also returned to a number of old issues unprompted, posting four pages of praise for his State of the Union address back on February 24 and denying a story by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl claiming Trump had called him the morning after the WHCD attack to check on his wellbeing – eight days after Karl first reported it.