White House ballroom is turning into a symbol of Trump’s failures
The surest sign that a MAGA leader knows they screwed up? When they try to pass off the stupid thing they said as a “joke.” But the right-wing podcaster Eric Metaxas was not joking at Sunday’s Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall when he said, “It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary.”
He had gotten a laugh a moment before when he mocked President James Madison for not having a ballroom when the White House was burned by the British during the War of 1812. But when Metaxas praised Donald Trump and claimed that God’s providence is on the president and his ballooning ballroom project, the crowd’s cheering was loud — and serious.
“For God so loved the world that he sent his only son into the world to build a ballroom,” liberal Christian comedian April Ajoy wrote on X, one of many online commenters who responded by showing Metaxas what actual humor looks like. That’s when he fell back on the old “just joking” defense of his Trump-fluffing blasphemy.
“Can you IMAGINE not getting that this was a joke?” Metaxas posted on Sunday evening. “OUCH. It’s almost painful to consider that these folks are SO bitter that they can’t ever laugh.”
Moments later, he weighed in again: “If ever you wanted to know whether bitterness can blind you to the joy of HUMOR and JOKES, here is the evidence.”
But Metaxas still wasn’t done. “Is ANYTHING more hilarious than TDS liberals taking the bait on my insane joke,” he posted a few hours later. This continued for days — in tweet after tweet, over and over and over again, he claimed he was kidding. Because nothing says you’re good at comedy like having to tell people more than a dozen times that the thing they did not laugh at was, in fact, a joke.
Trump’s ballroom is also a ham-fisted effort to conceal his inevitable legacy as the worst president the nation has ever seen.
Metaxas’s sad attempt to rewrite recent history is fitting. Trump’s ballroom is also a ham-fisted effort to conceal his inevitable legacy as the worst president the nation has ever seen. But like Metaxas’ tweet-a-thon, the president’s hope of gaslighting Americans into forgetting the past will backfire. Whether the garish spectacle Trump envisions is actually built — or, more likely, stays unfinished — it will be a testament to his true spot in history, as an epic failure.
It can sometimes seem like Trump, who is constitutionally barred from running for president again, has ceased caring about his reputation. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” the president told reporters on May 12, accidentally doing what he rarely does: tell the truth. Republican tried to clean up his comments by claiming the context — he was asked about the Iran war’s impact on people back home — exonerated his rhetoric. But Trump, who will turn 80 in June and is displaying increasing levels of disinhibition, declined his own chance to walk back his words when it was offered by Fox News’ Bret Baier.
“That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again,” Trump said, before insisting that the 50% spike in gas prices isn’t so bad.
The president followed up his display of indifference to Americans by openly picking their collective pockets by agreeing to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for setting up a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to pay for legal bills for people facing consequences for illegal actions on Trump’s behalf. As Paul Krugman wrote in his newsletter, the deal “is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.”
The White House ballroom illustrates how Trump has destroyed the Republican Party by turning it into a cult devoted to himself. After Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, ruled that a provision to give Trump $1 billion of taxpayer money for the project could not be included in an immigration enforcement funding bill, one would think Republicans would have been relieved. The ballroom is wildly unpopular, and MacDonough’s decision could have saved the GOP from insulting already aggrieved voters. Instead, Senate Republicans are reportedly trying to find another way to restore the funding. According to a report published by NOTUS, the president is pressuring Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire MacDonough. The ballroom could end up as a testament to how Republicans will torch their own political careers to appease their leader’s greed.
Decades of public displays of narcissism have thoroughly demonstrated that Trump does, in fact, care what people think. Perversely, the White House ballroom appears to be an effort to create a positive historical memory of his presidency. If that seems dumb, well, it’s worth remembering that Trump was never the brightest individual, even before his recent mercurial behavior and comments raised increasing alarms about his mental fitness for office. He probably does think slapping his name on a gaudy structure will be enough to overcome the historical record of his failures. Putting “Trump” on a bunch of buildings in New York City fooled people into thinking he’s a competent businessman, so why wouldn’t it work this time around?
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What’s more likely to happen, though, is that the White House ballroom becomes a monument to Trump’s failed presidency. There’s a strong chance it will never get finished. Democrats are likely to take the House — and quite possibly the Senate — in the November midterms, giving them power to delay construction until Trump is out of the White House. But even if he were to somehow manage to overcome legal hurdles and inevitable delays to get a ballroom built, it promises to be a tasteless extravaganza, despite the expense — a gilded eyesore in the middle of Washington that, like him, only purports to be great. The only object that could better symbolize his time in office is the gold toilet erected as an art installation in D.C. by a mysterious collective called the Secret Handshake.
Meanwhile, the latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump is setting records for presidential unpopularity. It’s not just that his abysmal 37% approval rating means he’s lost everyone except diehards who simply can’t admit liberals were right all along. But when asked about specific issues, there are signs that even many among the MAGA faithful are getting shaky. According to the poll, only 28% of Americans say they approve of Trump on cost-of-living issues, which were a core part of his reelection campaign’s message. Only 30% are willing to say that starting a war with Iran was a good decision. He does slightly better on immigration. But at only 41% approval, he is still underwater.
These are the defining issues of his presidency. Putting his name on an ugly ballroom won’t erase this legacy of failure. On the contrary, it will only reinforce Trump’s reputation as someone who is only good at doing terrible things.
Trump has been enriching himself in corrupt, and possibly illegal, ways the second he returned to the White House. On top of the $1.8 billion slush fund, in January the New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick uncovered $4 billion in Trump’s self-dealing and grifting, which has only grown worse since then. On Monday, Popular Info published an exposé of the president’s unusually active stock trading that showed how carefully timed public praise has often temporarily inflated companies impacted by his policies. Worse, this is all going on while ordinary Americans are being hammered financially by Trump’s agenda, with the costs of energy, food and healthcare increasing for millions.
The abstract nature of most of Trump’s grifting, which reportedly includes cryptocurrency, makes it hard to illustrate how he’s enriching himself and his allies at the expense of the American people. Large numbers tend to wash over people, even if they understand they’re supposed to care.
This is where the White House ballroom, if it ever gets built, will land especially hard. It will be a huge, hideous, expensive gift to himself, handily standing in as a very visible display of his corruption and contempt for ordinary people.
There is a sea of people calling on the next Democrat in the White House to simply bulldoze the atrocity if it is built, a move that is probably the right call. But it might be more useful to let it stand, keeping it empty and letting it fall into disrepair as a living reminder to voters of the foolishness that comes from voting for a greedy con artist as president.
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