Trump Defends Ballroom Plans, Says He Is Building It ‘for Other Presidents’

On Monday, under the white-and-yellow striped umbrellas of Trump’s own creation, the Rose Garden Club was set for lunch.

About 25 tables were arranged with white tablecloths, silver cutlery, drinking glasses, metal bread baskets and yellow roses. Four guests were seated at each table, giving the scene the air of a private members’ club temporarily dropped into the most public patch of grass in America.

The waiters wore black jackets and bow ties. The whole thing had the feeling of a luncheon where history, politics and real estate development had all somehow been invited to the same table.

Then, at 11:51 a.m., the door of the Oval Office opened.

President Donald Trump emerged as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” boomed from loudspeakers. The guests rose. They applauded. And there he was, the president once again entering to the soundtrack of his own political myth.

“We won three elections with that song,” Trump said.

But Trump had not come merely to bask in the music. He had come to defend a ballroom.

“The best thing and the biggest thing that we’re doing is we’re building a ballroom and a tremendous military centre that was supposed to be top secret, but is no longer top secret because no matter what you do, you get sued. They sue because they think the ballroom’s too big, the ballroom’s too small, ‘I don’t like the colour of the ceiling’. You get sued in this world we’re living in, especially if your name is Trump, you get sued. And you get sort of good at it after a while. It becomes routine. It’s ridiculous, but we’re building something the likes of which will never be even close to being competed with,” he said.

The White House ballroom, as Trump presented it, was not a vanity project but an institutional necessity: a structure demanded by diplomacy, scale and the practical inconvenience of the White House being too small for its own guests.

“We had King Charles here. Everybody wanted to be here. We couldn’t hold everybody,” Trump said.”But soon you’ll be able to. It will be, I think it’s going to be one of the most beautiful structures in Washington when it’s completed. And I’ve done many ballrooms, and this will be, there won’t be anything to compete with this anywhere in the country. And that’s what it should have, and it will use it exclusively only for the White House, but it’s really what it should have.”

Trump noted noted that inaugurations are often cold and the most recent was moved to the US Capitol.

“It’s a very small space. It’s not safe. It’s not. They didn’t have drones in mind when they built it. They didn’t have other things in mind either. But we were able to get 921 people in and this will hold many times that number of people without the tables and seats. And bulletproof, drone-proof, missile-proof in many cases and beautiful at the same time. And a big military component, including on the roof, a drone port. Can you believe we have a drone port and it’s like no other, so we’re doing a great service. It’s great national security,” he said.

Trump noted that President Xi Jinping is coming before the end of September and suggested that the United States needed a room equal to the demands of statecraft at scale.

“What we need is a big ballroom that can hold thousands of people,” Trump said.

China, he noted, has one.

To the criticism that he was building the ballroom for himself, Trump offered the answer of a president who sees his own imprint as a gift to successors.

“I’ll be lucky if I get six months because it will be done towards the middle of ‘28. I’m really building it for other presidents,” Trump said.

The president then pivoted to the balance sheet.

He began talking about Trump Accounts and thanked Sen. Ted Cruz. He invoked the “hottest stock market in history” and praised the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq for coming together.

From there, the speech moved into law and order.

Trump touted his record reducing crime, saying 91% of crime in Washington, D.C., was caused by 2.1% of the population. Now, he said, the city is safe and restaurants are flourishing. The capital, in his telling, had been rescued from disorder and restored to dinner reservations.

“Crimes of passion we can’t do much about. Just one of those things,” Trump said.

Then came the invitation to Democratic governors and mayors.

“I just wish that I’d get a call from the governor of Illinois, as an example, or the mayor Chicago,” Trump said, saying they need help. “I would sort it out so fast.”

“I wish Governor Newsom would call me,” he added.

He moved next to merit, one of the administration’s favored watchword, applying it to colleges, the military and the country itself.

“We now have a country based on merit. That goes for colleges… And you get into the military on merit… We have strong soldiers… It’s all based on merit,” Trump said.

“We grew based on merit. We didn’t grow based on you’ve got to have x, x, x and x.”

Then, with the lunch tables still gleaming and the yellow roses in place, Trump turned on the Democrats.

“Social Democrat is a communist… There’s no appetite for it,” he said.

In one of the unscripted moments of the event, Trump praised Nicki Minaj, who stood and received applause from the guests.

Trump closed by thanking major companies that have supported Trump Accounts, noting the financial incentives behind the program.

“There’s tremendous tax benefit,” he said.

He also said 401(k)s are up, folding the retirement accounts of ordinary Americans into the broader economic message he had been building from the lectern.

Then Trump turned back to the setting itself.

“It’s so great to have you here. A place we were never able to use because of the condition of the soil,” he told guests in the Rose Garden.

Now, he said, it is the “hottest place” in the country.

“Should we put on a little music? Yes? This way you don’t have to talk to each other,” Trump said.

Moments later, the first track boomed from the loudspeakers: the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”