President Trump on Wednesday defended his prized White House ballroom project after Senate Republicans included $1 billion for ballroom security in their $72 billion immigration enforcement package, drawing renewed attention to the rising cost estimates for the construction and the president’s repeated promises that only private donations would be used and “not one penny” of public money.
Trump’s stated cost for the ballroom has ballooned from an initial $200 million to $250 million to $300 million to about $400 million — and that doesn’t include the $1 billion Republicans now want to make available to the Secret Service through September 2029 “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades” to the ballroom project. The GOP’s partisan budget reconciliation plans bar any of the funding from being used for “non-security elements” of the ballroom construction, officially referred to as the East Wing Modernization Project.
“The only reason the cost has changed is because, after deep rooted studies, it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal, which would not have been adequate to handle the necessary events, meetings, and even future Inaugurations,” Trump wrote in an early morning post on his social media site. “The original price was 200 Million Dollars, the double sized, highest quality completed project will be something less than 400 Million Dollars. It will be magnificent, safe, and secure! This was a necessary change, it was done long ago, but the Fake News failed to report it, trying to make it look like there was a cost overrun. Actually, it is coming in ahead of schedule, and under budget!”
The White House welcomed the funding provision.
“The White House applauds Congress's latest proposal in its reconciliation package which includes additional funding for security infrastructure upgrades in relation to the long overdue East Wing Modernization Project,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement to news outlets. “Due in part to the recent assassination attempt on President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS.”
The president and other Republicans have said the shooting last month by a would-be assassin at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton demonstrates the need for Trump’s ballroom.
Some Republicans have proposed to have the federal government cover the cost of ballroom construction, with private donations used for related costs such as china. Those proposals met immediate opposition from Democrats, who now plan to try to remove the $1 billion funding provision from the reconciliation bill when it comes to the Senate floor.
The GOP funding proposal has given Democrats a juicy target for attacks.
“This is hypocrisy at its finest,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on social media in response to Trump’s post. “Trump's gold-encrusted ballroom has gone from costing $200 million funded by shady donors to $1 BILLION from TAXPAYERS—snuck into the ICE bill by Senate Republicans. But Trump wants to prosecute Powell for cost overruns of the Fed's renovation.”
And Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, criticized Republicans for working to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the ballroom but cutting money to help working families. “If you are mad about Republicans' shoveling $1 BILLION at Trump's ballroom—as you should be!—just remember: Trump is asking them to blow 1500x times that amount on his war budget,” she wrote in a post on X.
The bottom line: Trump’s ballroom was already unpopular with American voters: 56% opposed it and a mere 28% supported it, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted late last month, and that was before the new $1 billion funding proposal.