[WaPo] Trump plans $200M overhaul of East Wing in significant change to White House

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/31/trump-ballroom-east-wing-overhaul/

Trump plans $200M overhaul of East Wing in significant change to White House
The project to construct a massive ballroom fulfills a wish for Trump, who has long disliked the tent pitched on the lawn to accommodate large-scale events.
By Jonathan Edwards

President Donald Trump, a longtime developer, is overseeing the construction of a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom that will remake the East Wing of the White House, effecting one of the biggest changes to “the People’s House” in a century.

The White House State Ballroom will seat 650 people, more than triple the capacity of the East Room, which is currently the largest room at the White House. Construction is set to begin in September and be done “long before” the end of Trump’s second term, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The project, long on Trump’s wish list, seeks to solve a problem Leavitt said has frustrated the president and his predecessors: a lack of space for major functions involving dignitaries that currently require “a large and unsightly tent” about 300 feet from the main building entrance, the White House said.

“For 150 years, Presidents, and many others, have wanted a beautiful Ballroom, but it never got built because nobody previously had any knowledge or experience in doing such things,” Trump said in a social media post earlier this summer. “But I do, like maybe nobody else, and it will go up quickly, and be a wonderful addition, very much in keeping with the magnificent White House itself.”

The ballroom will be built where the “small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits,” Leavitt said Thursday during a press briefing. When asked if crews would tear anything down to make way for the new structure, Leavitt said “the East Wing is going to be modernized” and those whose offices are set up there, including first lady Melania Trump and her staff, will relocate during construction.

Trump and other donors have agreed to pay the roughly $200 million needed to build the ballroom, Leavitt said, a project that she said will be designed by McCrery Architects, built by Clark Construction and engineered by AECOM.

Building a large White House ballroom has been an ambition of Trump’s since before he was president. In his 2015 memoir “Believer,” David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said he talked to Trump during the Obama administration on a phone call in which “The Apprentice” reality TV star insulted the tents officials used to host state dinners and offered to build a ballroom.

“Let me build you a ballroom you can assemble and take apart,” Axelrod recalled Trump saying. “Trust me. It’ll look great.”

In February 2015, then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed Trump had made the offer. Neither Obama nor his advisers seriously considered taking him up on it because “I’m not sure that it would be appropriate to have a shiny gold Trump sign on any part of the White House,” Earnest told reporters.

Trump in February said he’d offered three or four times over the years to build a ballroom. Trump said he even made the offer to the Biden administration after losing the 2020 election but never heard back.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

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text:

The addition of a 90,000 square-foot White House State Ballroom marks the first significant expansion to the White House in over 70 years, but President Trump isn't done yet.

The Babylon Bee has obtained the following list of other improvements Trump is planning for the White House:

1. A giant "TRUMP" sign will be installed over the front entrance: This is just standard procedure.
   
   
2. Trap doors leading to a giant alligator pit will be installed under each chair in the White House Press Room: The Associated Press will reportedly be invited back for the unveiling.
   
   
3. Building of a 50,000 square-foot monkey house so Trump can laugh at the monkeys: It will be the biggest, most beautiful monkey house ever built.
   
   
4. A button Trump can press while saying "We need guns, lots of guns" and then the lights dim and cabinets full of guns shoot out of the walls and ceiling and stuff while cool music plays: Leather trench coats and sunglasses will be included.
   
   
5. The Presidential Emergency Operations Center will be expanded to feature a doomsday bunker full of Diet Coke in case China nukes the Diet Coke factories: There would be no hope to rebuild without Diet Coke.
   
   
6. A cool fireman's pole that goes down into the Oval Office: Made of solid gold, of course.
   
   
7. The addition of a Presidential Sword Room: You have to have somewhere to keep all the swords.
   
   
8. The Lincoln Bedroom will be remodeled and converted into the Kid Rock Bedroom: It's ok, since historians say Lincoln would have been a big fan of Kid Rock.
   
   
9. An official UFC octagon where Trump can fight other world leaders: This innovation will really simplify diplomacy.
   
   
10. A full-sized Buc-ee's constructed on the south lawn: The only building more American than the White House itself.
    

Not even the Founding Fathers could have imagined a more amazing residence for the president. What other improvements should Trump make?

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