How Trump Turned His Ballroom into a Midterm Gift for Democrats

Trump says he can't afford childcare but wants to use your tax dollars to build a ballroom/

How leaders respond in moments of crisis tells you everything about their values and priorities.

After the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Trump went to the White House briefing room to address the press and the nation.

In that moment, Trump could have called for national unity or decried the disturbing rise in political violence. He could have talked about the need for everyone to ratchet down the political rhetoric. I know this is crazy, but he could have even called for changes to our gun laws.

He did none of those things.

Instead, Trump used the moment when he had the nation’s attention — and the sympathy and concern of many people who disagree with him — to push for the construction of the White House ballroom.

After the press conference, Trump posted the following on Truth Social:

What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE. This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough! While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World, The White House. The ridiculous Ballroom lawsuit, brought by a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit, must be dropped, immediately. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with its construction, which is on budget and substantially ahead of schedule!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

This wasn’t just a rattled, addled President shooting from the hip. This was a concerted White House PR campaign to use the shooting to argue for Trump’s ballroom construction project, which is currently tied up in court. The White House maintains group chats with MAGA influencers and tells them what to post about (this is not unusual; Democratic politicians do the same thing). At the exact same moment on Saturday night, all of these MAGA accounts started posting the same message calling for the construction of the ballroom.

Trump’s obsession with his ballroom is bizarre. Given all the problems in the world and Trump’s political challenges at home, taking every opportunity possible to wax about a home renovation project is an odd choice, to say the least.

Trump’s ballroom fixation also helps explain why his approval is at an all-time low and continuing to sink.

Seriously.

It’s emblematic of all of his political problems.

Here’s why.

A Solution to the Wrong Problem

This is not the most important point, but Trump’s ballroom is not a solution to the problem of political violence. It’s one of those arguments that seems like it makes sense at first but can’t withstand three nanoseconds of scrutiny.

First, I’ll defer to others on the specific security setup at the dinner. It’s been many years since I’ve been there, but the setup seems similar to what I remember. The ballroom is downstairs, and the main security perimeter is well before people get close to it — not at the main lobby of the hotel. It’s a massive hotel, with guests in town for the dinner but for other reasons too. The main level hosts a series of receptions that include people who don’t have a ticket to the dinner itself. The gunman didn’t penetrate the security perimeter or get close to the dignitaries. Every event has a security perimeter, and someone can always bring a gun to that perimeter. That’s true at the White House too, where someone could have a gun outside the gates and start shooting. Building a ballroom doesn’t fix that problem.

Second, let’s say it did fix the problem. Are Trump and his allies arguing that he will never leave the White House? Will all of his events be on campus? Is Trump just going to hole up in the White House and never leave? (Maybe?) The dinner is not a White House event. It’s hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association, the group that represents the reporters who cover the White House. Even if the ballroom were built, the dinner wouldn’t have been there.

It just makes no sense. It’s painfully stupid.

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

Why the Ballroom is a Political Problem

Trump’s political problems are myriad and growing. Everything that could be going wrong seems to be going wrong for Trump and Republicans. But if I had to boil it all down, there is a pretty simple explanation.

You’ve heard me say this a million times, but it’s still the most important factor in American politics: Trump ran on the promise to cut people’s costs, and he didn’t do it. In fact, he seems focused on everything other than lowering prices — ICE raids, wars in the Middle East, deposing Venezuelan dictators, lining his own pockets, and cutting people’s healthcare and closing rural hospitals.

Trump’s obsession with the ballroom fits in this category, but it also stands out because it’s so dumb and pointless. The last thing people care about is whether Presidents have sufficient space to wine and dine other elites.

A Washington Post poll released last week showed just how unpopular Trump’s ballroom is. Barely a quarter of Americans support it, and 56% oppose it.

Notably, only 18% of independents and 34% of non-MAGA Republicans support it.

Sometimes in politics, you need an evocative example to illustrate a larger point. In the 1980s, a commission sponsored by Ronald Reagan was tasked with looking for waste in military spending. It found that the Pentagon was paying $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for an aircraft coffee maker. Those examples made it easy to understand a wasteful and dysfunctional federal bureaucracy.

Trump’s ballroom can symbolize his focus on himself at the expense of everyone else. Building a massive, corporate-funded ballroom to host fancy parties — while Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gas, and while groceries, healthcare, and housing prices keep rising — is some real fiddling while Rome burns.

The GOP Turns the Ballroom Into a Midterm Issue

The ballroom is helping push down Trump’s approval rating, which is inherently bad for Republicans since presidential approval is at least somewhat correlated with midterm performance. But this was a Trump-specific problem that didn’t really bleed into the midterm campaign.

Then Republicans decided the political environment wasn’t bad enough.

Last week, Congressional Republicans made the problem worse by proposing that we spend $400 million in taxpayer money to build the ballroom. Rural hospitals are closing. Gas is over $4 a gallon. People are getting kicked off their healthcare — and Trump and the Republicans want to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a ballroom?

Democrats will be able to run ads hitting Republicans for spending taxpayer money on the ballroom instead of lowering prices. It fits the broader narrative of misplaced Republican priorities — tax cuts for the rich, forever wars in the Middle East, and ballrooms for political and moneyed elites.

This is a layup for Democrats, because we don’t even have to work that hard to highlight the ballroom.

Trump can’t shut up about it.