The White House ballroom will never be built
In October, Donald Trump traumatized all true patriots by tearing down the East Wing of the White House. The move, he claims, will clear the way for a ballroom for holding large events that are typically held in tents on the South Lawn. A debate immediately arose online over whether or not the next Democratic president should tear down the ballroom or keep it, albeit with the necessary extensive renovations to remove all the tackiness Trump brings to any project.
Two months later, it increasingly seems that such discussion was a wasted effort, as the chance this ballroom will actually be built is rapidly disappearing. Perhaps it could have if Trump had delegated the management of the project to someone competent, but that’s not what he did. Instead, the famously lazy and disorganized president decided to blow off his actual governance duties in favor of micromanaging a construction project he is incapable of handling. Finishing the ballroom in the next three years would be difficult for anyone, but it’s quickly becoming clear it will be nearly impossible for the famed real estate tycoon to pull it off.
The whole thing is a too-perfect symbol of Trump’s second administration: They are very good at breaking things, but they don’t know how to create anything of value.
The whole thing is a too-perfect symbol of Trump’s second administration: They are very good at breaking things, but they don’t know how to create anything of value.
For anyone who has dealt with any renovation project more complex than patching drywall, the ballroom’s construction is waving every red flag possible, signaling endless delays that will stretch for months — and, in all likelihood, for years. Despite announcing plans for the ballroom in July, it’s clear there’s no idea what it’s going to look like, how big it will be or how it will be laid out. Trump keeps changing things, driven by a short-sighted impulsiveness that keeps pushing him to expand the scope of the project. Initially, it was supposed to seat 650 people in 90,000 square feet, but he kept throwing tantrums about how he wanted it bigger. Earlier this month, he even an off the initial architect, and odds are that will happen again.
The projected price tag has already ballooned from $200 million to $400 million, but those numbers have almost no meaning since they don’t correlate to any plans that would generate an estimate. On Tuesday, the Washington Post published an update on the project, and the overall takeaway is that no one seems to know what’s going on. There’s no final design and no specifics about location. There’s not even an agreement on whether it will seat 650 or 1,000 people or more, since those details seem to depend on Trump’s mood.
Then there’s the red tape. Even though a judge ruled against the National Trust for Historic Preservation in their lawsuit to temporarily halt construction, he required the White House to avoid building anything foundational and demanded plans for the structure be submitted by the end of the year. But as the White House hasn’t even scheduled meetings with the National Capital Planning Commission to start the process, meeting that deadline appears unlikely.
Despite his self-branding as a builder, Trump hasn’t been in the game for a long time. He did oversee the construction of a few buildings in the 1980s through the early 2000s, but most of his reputation comes from slapping his name on existing properties, many of which are owned by others who just license his name. The 79-year-old president has lost whatever limited capacity he may have once possessed to make good on stated goals — or at least those that involve building or creating, instead of simply blowing things up.
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This much was made especially obvious Wednesday night when Trump gave a primetime address that, like with most things Trump, failed miserably to meet the hype. His approval ratings have been falling, as it slowly dawns on voters that he has no intention of making good on campaign promises to lower cost of living. On the contrary, his main economic policy — if you can call imposing, changing and revoking tariffs on a whim a “policy” — has only served to increase the costs of everyday goods for Americans. In true Trump style, however, he has no plan to make the economy better. Instead, his speech was a blizzard of lies and empty promises of a better future that, as with past promises, he will not act on.
Trump’s speech was vapid but also very, very loud. He talked at odd speeds and was often shouting, as if sheer volume could make up for his ineptitude at taking real action. Of course, that’s always how Trump has operated: pretending to be successful by making glittering claims at high decibel levels, all the while hoping his marks won’t notice he’s conning them until it’s too late. The strategy has worked with depressing frequency, including securing him two presidential wins. So it’s not a surprise he thinks that telling huge lies with maximum lung capacity will overpower people’s ability to remember what gas prices actually are. But polls suggest his lies aren’t working as well any more, and there’s no reason that they’ll be more persuasive because he’s yelling.
We have no reason to believe that his ballroom plans are any different: lots of talk with limited ability to deliver. Yet it does seem Trump has started to absorb the uncomfortable realization that he is a mortal human being. At nearly 80, he’s started to “joke” about his unlikelihood of getting into heaven. This might account for why he has grown so focused on redesigning the White House; he see it as a way to leave his mark so that people will remember him, no matter how much they wish not to, after he’s gone.
But in true Trump style, even existential yearnings are no match for his inherent laziness. While talking up the ballroom project, his actual renovations of the White House have only been destructive, like demolishing the East Wing. Others are so flimsy and gaudy that they will be gone by the end of the first day of the next president. On top of the cheap-looking “gold” decorations that keep piling up in the Oval Office and the tacky Motel 6-level signs, Trump installed a “presidential walk of fame” along the West Wing portico. It’s trash, of course: Pictures of presidents — both good and bad, but all more worthy of the title than Trump — with plaques that are really commentary on the demented obsessions of the petty man squatting in the Oval Office. Joe Biden is represented with a photo of an autopen — which Trump also uses to sign bills — with the caption “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History.” Barack Obama is also the subject of humorless insults.
This attempt by Trump to leave his mark is destined for the trash heap, probably before 3 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2029. He’s restarted weak efforts to pretend he’ll just take an illegal third term, but his apparent poor health and exhaustion leaves most wondering if he’ll be able to make it through the second. He can attempt to force the Kennedy Center to be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, as he announced Thursday, following his tradition of slapping his name on stuff other people built. But that surface level shift will almost certainly be turned back before Trump’s belongings are moved out of his White House bedroom.
It seems to be dawning on him that even many of his voters can’t wait to start forgetting Trump ever existed. Efforts to force a lasting legacy are maddening, but ultimately, they will fail. Trump will be felled by the worthlessness he’s spent a lifetime trying to conceal with cheap parlor tricks, because he’s incapable of making a true, lasting contribution.
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