Trump’s Ballroom Broke the Democrats

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s a big controversy that President Donald Trump is not just leaving his mark on the country, but he’s leaving his mark on the White House.

For years, decades, maybe over a century, people have complained that the world’s superpower has nowhere at its capital, i.e., its executive branch, at the White House to entertain people. And usually, tents are constructed when there’s diplomatic or state dinners or there’s festivities.

Donald Trump, the builder, comes along in his second term and says: You know what? I’m going to solve the problem. I’m going to refashion the East Wing of the White House complex and build a beautiful 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which will allow 650 guests to eat and be entertained and to have official functions. And more importantly, I am going to enlist people from the private sector to pay for it, along with myself. And the price will probably be somewhere between $200 and $300 million.

The plans are out there. It’s perfectly transparent. There’s a list of everybody who’s donated. They’re not just right-wing donors. There’s most of the familiar Silicon Valley grandees: Apple, Meta, etc. And it looks pretty much consistent with the style of the White House in general.

But people were outraged because to build this huge ballroom—which was sorely needed—you had to demolish the area where it will connect into the east complex. And of course, that’s always messy.

So, immediately, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the Left—who have shut down the government—are saying the people don’t have enough food or they’re not getting paid, and Donald Trump is building this luxurious, capitalist, oligarchic, aristocratic hallway. No. It’s for all of America. It’s being privately paid. And if the senators are worried about the people with less means, then just open the government.

But more importantly, it wasn’t more than a nanosecond when the media—Left and Right—started to give examples that refurbishing, remodeling, redoing the White House is very common since its or origins.

It was burned down—the War of 1812—completely rebuilt.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who suffered from paralysis, wanted to put an indoor swimming pool. He did. And it was torn out by a later administration, made into a press room.

President Jerry Ford wanted to swim. So, he has an outdoor swimming pool. He just tore up the garden and made a swimming pool. And people use it to this day.

President Barack Obama wanted to refashion a tennis court into a basketball court. He did just that.

President Harry Truman came in and said: You know, this White House is creaky. I don’t feel that it’s up to code. I’m gonna move to Blair House for four or five years and gut the entire White House. And they did.

So, redoing the White House is nothing new. Having private donors pay for it is advisable and nothing new. But then there was also this argument that it belittles the sanctity of the White House. This ugly scar that we’re watching as the demolition crews break up the existing East Wing to attach this ballroom.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was one of the most severe critics. But if you look at the California historic State Capitol, it’s been demolished, almost. There is an ugly wound where the whole side of it has been gutted and you can look into the ruin. And why? Because it’s necessary, if you want to expand the offices, the parking garage, the facilities, the cafeteria, the gym. Everything for the Democratic supermajorities in California.

And remember, in California, we only have nine of 52 Republican congresspeople. Both senators are Democratic. No statewide office holder is Republican. And there’s supermajorities in both legislature. And they voted that they wanted to spend not $200 million, not $300 million, not $400 million, not $800 million, not $1 billion, but $1.6 billion. And not from Meta or Amazon or Elon Musk or any of those people, but from the taxpayers, who are facing a $20 to $30 billion deficit.

And that wound makes the White House wound look small in comparison. The job is much more vast. And guess what? It will probably suffer the fate of high-speed rail and be delayed and delayed and delayed, as it already has, at the expense, not of private donors, but of the taxpayer.

A final note. Do we really want to know what belittles the White House? I mean, we’re just coming off the Biden administration, where cocaine was found in a carrel in the West Wing. And nobody seemed to want to investigate whether it had anything to do with the former cocaine addict and presidential son, Hunter Biden. But it was found there.

Do you remember when Barack Obama was president? He brought in a whole cadre of Muslim Brotherhood people that were tied to Hamas Islamic terrorism. He brought an entourage, in 2012, into the White House.

I remember, 2016, he thought it would be neat to have his favorite rappers in the White House. Kendrick Lamar—“Pimp a Butterfly.” Remember those lyrics about killing the police in the White House? That rapper—“kill po-po,” as he said.

Then there was the rapper Rick Ross. Remember, everybody was sitting in a solemn occasion in our nation’s executive mansion and his beeper went out because he was a criminal who was under house arrest as part of his sentence for assault and battery, and he had been accused of kidnapping. And all of a sudden, in front of this presidential entourage, Michelle Obama here, Barack Obama here, his beeper goes off on his ankle bracelet.

We could go on with the embarrassing incidents. I won’t mention what transpired between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton right off the Oval Office in the presidential laboratory.

But nonetheless, the ballroom was needed. It’s paid for by private funds. It will be built efficiently, quickly, quite unlike what we see in California with taxpayers’ money and incompetence and regulations. And the Left, who shut down the government, is angry. But it doesn’t really know what it’s angry about, other than it just wants to be angry.

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