Donald Trump defended the destruction of the White House’s East Wing to make way for his new ballroom after facing backlash from left-wing politicians and the general public.
While taking questions Wednesday, the president brought out pictures of what the new balloroom he’s building will look like while being asked about the destruction of the East Wing – something he said would not happen prior to construction starting.
“After really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world, we determined that really knocking it down, trying to use a little section,” the president said. “The East Wing was not much. There was not much left from the original. Over the course of a hundred years, it was changed, the columns were removed, it was a much different building then – a story was added on in 1948, 1949, which was not particularly nice. It was very, very much changed from what it was originally.”
He added: “It was never thought of as much, it was a very small building. Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building that frankly they’ve been after for years … I think it will be one of the great ballrooms anywhere in the world. It’s about $300 million.”
Construction vehicles tore down part of the White House’s East Wing on Monday. In the place of the debris, Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom will rise. The president had previously claimed that the ballroom’s construction would not interfere with the building’s current structure. The destruction witnessed Monday proved those comments to be false which sent Democrats condemning the move.
“A $250 million gilded White House ballroom. $40 billion dollars to bail out Argentina,” California Senator Alex Padilla remarked on his X account. “Meanwhile, millions of Americans are bracing for their health insurance payments to double because Trump won’t lift a finger to help them.”
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren similarly condemned Trump’s ballroom project, writing on X, “Oh you’re trying to say the cost of living is skyrocketing? Donald Trump can’t hear you over the sound of bulldozers demolishing a wing of the White House to build a new grand ballroom.”
“It is corruption at its core,” former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the construction project during an appearance on “The View” Tuesday. “There’s no greater metaphor right now [for] what’s happening right now in this country than watching Donald Trump take a wrecking ball to the White House.”
You can watch Trump’s White House comments in the video above.
