It’s time to play “White House or Ukraine?” Can you tell which is which?
Donald J. Trump, July 31, 2025
“Nothing will be torn down”
Karoline Leavitt, July 31, 2025
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While specific length and width dimensions are not publicly available, the alleged 90,000-square-foot total area of the new building will dwarf the main White House residence, which is 55,000 square feet. The ballroom floor area of the building is reputed to be about 25,000 square feet. Even that is greater than the footprint of the entire original portion of the White House, which covers an area of about 15,000 sq.ft. (168×85)
How is this any different than taking a wrecking ball to the Washington Monument? He’s a temporary resident defacing history with his terrible taste and grift-driven psychotic behavior.
All the pedophiles and pedophile lovers that make up his cult were so upset about “history” and tradition when Cracker Barrel changed a logo – where’s all that false outrage and perpetual victimhood now, you kid diddlers?
I have to say that I can’t understand the passion on this issue. The two-story portion of the East Wing is a rectangular box that is neither architecturally nor historically important, so modernizing it, consistent with the Georgian neoclassical style of the original building, seems fine to me. I wish they would re-create the original East Wing facade exactly as it was, to form the entrance to the new building, since that portion is elegant, and the face that we recognize, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards based on what I’ve seen so far. It seems that will be replaced by this, which seems like a pedestrian bastardization of the style.
The optics do seem bad. Yes, it’s a Marie Antoinette moment to be creating an opulent ballroom – swanky bullshit, to use my usual nomenclature – while people are trying to make ends meet while furloughed, or working with no pay. But if it is paid for by private donations and it upgrades the building consistent with the existing architecture, I don’t view it as some kind of desecration. We don’t really need a ballroom, but there’s no real harm done by one.
As usual, the lies and cover-up are worse than the action. Why did they pretend nothing would be torn down? That part I don’t get. It seems like lying just for the sake of lying, as if lying itself were a desirable art form. If they had just said that the East Wing needs to present a better face to the country and the world, that would have been fine.
Of course the project will probably be totally tacky, like Trump’s apartments and his changes to the Oval Office, but it can always be toned down later.
Good job on the “creepiest ultracrepidarian you’ve ever cringed at” persona.
That “if” is doing some heavy lifting. Try think back to that time when Trump built something consistent with the style of the original building (or neighborhood). Fair to assume that “paying for it with private donations” will amount to stiffing the builders and pocketing any donations.
There are bigger policy issues arising from the actions of this President that deserve attention, granted. But sometimes symbolism and optics are important. Demolishing a substantial portion of what is arguably the most symbolically important building in the U.S. and replacing it – with little public debate and input – with a gaudy vanity project, does not sit right with a lot of people. And it might be paid for privately, but the donees are people with business before the government. The whole thing smells foul. It is the sort of thing you would expect from a tin-pot third-world dictatorship.
Stalin and Hiterlesque..
Or Mussolini.
Let’s hope Trump is not aware of this when he signs off on his monument:
Man, that thing is an eyesore.
But you know Trump won’t be satisfied with the second-biggest ego monument
Clearly you’re missing the boat on this.
What pisses me off is that we have someone treating the White House as his own property with which he can do any fucking anything he wants without any penalty except in non-MAGA public opinion. And as we can see from the likes of 2028 and Trutherbob, his servile MAGA nitwits will go along with anything Leader wants.
Yes. That’s the real issue. What he’s doing may be a monstrosity, a desecration, or a stunning improvement, but whatever the result, he decided that demolition on his own with no input from any other branch and no chance for anybody to stop it.
Supposedly he will run the rebuilding plans through the proper channels,
I stress “supposedly.”
The obvious response is to blow the White House up with all the present occupants in it.
American is a dictatorship. When will the American population stop denying the bleeding obvious?
When it affects a majority of them directly. Or when Trump gets Great Depression II going.
I’d say that’s accurate…a nation of sheeple.
Hey, we need to have a space for that rasslin’ match on the 4th of July…
The Fanta Menace wants to “leave his mark” on Washington DC in the form of physical structures he can point to and say “I made that.” Same with his idea for an arch in Memorial Circle. The dingus doesn’t realize that those places of honor along the National Mall are reserved for MEMORIALS. The Washington Monument. Lincoln Memorial. Jefferson. Vietnam. Korea. WWII.
You want an arch on the Mall… you gotta be dead first.
So, Smittty and Carlos, now you guys are concerned with honoring and preserving memorials? I thought liberals wanted to tear down all the monuments previously erected to the great, white men of the past?
Presidents have been modifying, adding onto, changing, and remodeling the White House since Day 1. The East Wing, West Wing, and both Porticos were all additions. Presidents have added gardens,, bowling alleys, pools,, tennis courts, basketball courts, and made all other manner of changes, but if Trump does it, Lleyton says he’s a dictator?
You guys need to get a grip. The TDS is strong on these comment sections. If a new White House ballroom is the biggest thing going on in your life, it might be time to get a hobby.
Lmao. Those talking points failed already. Get some new ones.
Especially since the world is conspiring against you and your leader. You gotta keep up, man!
And which monuments to great, white man of the past are you referring to?
I saw a lot of confederate monuments being removed but we shouldn’t be honoring traitors anyways.
Hey, they tore down the monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest. Who was greater than that dude?
I recognize that most of that list is confederate military folks, but they also destroyed or removed statues of Jefferson, Washington, US Grant, and Francis Scott Key, among others. As a liberal, you probably don’t recognize those people as great men, but they did do great things for this country.
That wiki article even mentions the demolition of a statue in Wisconsin of a white abolitionist. Sometimes when lefties start smashing and burning, they just can’t stop.
Yes, it’s true. The far left is every bit as irrational as the far right. A classic example is “defund the police,” which may have been the single stupidest idea in the history of ideas. At the moment, however, the far right is the only group with the power to do any harm, and they seem hell-bent on it.
There’s a lot of double standards purity checking when someone on left says something versus someone on the right. Trump can say 50 lies or idiotic things in the course of one diatribe to the press, and people gloss over it.
In other words, the GOP can get away with providing simple superficial slogans to solving problems versus coming up with one that summarizes systemic problems. It’s why Paul Ryan can come out with a postcard and say, “Taxes hard, THIS solves everything!” or Trump can say “Drill baby drill” – prices high, drill more oil for supply, prices go down – problem solved!
It’s much more difficult to summarize, hey we spend all this money on law enforcement or military, we’re not any safer, there’s no controls on, as RATM put it succinctly: “those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.”
How do you put that on a nice neat slogan? It wasn’t even one come up by a politician, it was used colloquially by community groups and then turned into a dog whistle by conservative media, like everything else. What do you mean defund the police, you’re for anarchy and crime!
That’s the boomerang effect of ignorant false simplicity. Surface level emotional solutions with snappy slogans and brute force fix everything. The War on Drugs in the 80s obviously solved everything. Giving the military industrial complex trillions every year has solved every world conflict, etc.
Complex problems and the corruption behind them don’t lend well to surface level solutions or surface level slogans, which means trying to talk about them or use activism to protest them creates misrepresentation and an easy boomerang counter to just toss it away. Hey we need military and law enforcement someone’s gotta do it, if a few innocent are jailed, a few heads are cracked, a few women raped or people killed – that’s the cost of doing business, eh? As long as its not me!
Maybe that should be the new US slogan, “As long as its not me!” should be put on every dollar going forward.
All four of those people were slave owners.
Sometimes mistakes happen. Nothing “the left” did approaches Jan 6th nevermind the various misdeeds conservatives have done over the years.
As a white man, we definitely have different definitions of ‘great white men’. Confederate generals that fought to continue to use slaves as labor for excessive wealth under the guise of ‘states rights’ sure as fuck isn’t on any level of greatness of anything I inspire to. I think the only thing you and your like should aspire to is how the rest of you Nazis ended up after WW2.
between this and the Make Argentina Great Again plan, I’ll be surprised if his own base don’t solve the Trump problem.
Your lips, God’s ears.
I wonder if this could be Trump’s ‘Let them eat cake’ moment.
They’re morons….see Maga2028 as a prime example.
He could do anything and nobody is willing to stop him. The future of the United States looks very grim.
Renovating the White House like this is not the act of a person who believes he’s a temporary resident. This is the act of a person who plans to stay until death.
The Trump Family and the Republican Party need to be forced to pay the full cost of removing all of the alterations and restoring the building to it’s former state.
And who is going to force them?
Oh, I have no doubt that the taxpayers will have to foot the bill.
Teddy Roosevelt built the West Wing.
Taft made the Executive Office oval.
FDR added the entire East Wing and included an indoor pool for himself.
Truman gutted the entire White House.
Nixon added a bowling alley.
Obama added a basketball court.
Trump is building a ballroom.
Yes. A ballroom. A structure that has never been thought necessary, will be useless for the real business of government or even the health or well-being of the president, will dwarf the White House itself, and, if it is built in typical Trump style, will be hideously ugly. That’s the same as those other things.
Truman did not choose to gut the White House, BTW. It had to be done because the structure was dangerously decrepit.
You should probably look up the actual facts about the place being “gutted”, and why it was done.
You know, legs of pianos falling through the floor, little things like that.
Go and do it.
You’re another lackwit parroting what you’ve been told, regardless of reality.
It’d be sad if you had any potential.
Coming soon: “So many people are saying to me that I should be on Mt. Rushmore, that I have done so much more than those already there. It could be done without damaging anything and there’d be so many visitors you wouldn’t believe it. The American people really want this to happen”
His megalomania is becoming more and more pronounced. So is the weakness of his grasp of reality and inability to see how people will react to what he says and does. He will just get worse and worse. I wonder if he will have the Washington Monument knocked down so he can put up a much grander monument to himself? Perhaps a pyramid bigger than Cheops.
I’d say the roughly 40% that support him also lack a grasp of reality.
I’ve already it seeing it being called “The Epstein Ballroom”
It’s so perfect.
He is already pushing plans for a memorial arch, the Arc de Trumpf, which is to be considerably larger than the nearby Lincoln Memorial. When asked who it was for, his reply was “Me!”
And I bet the ballroom will end up being mostly used for MAGA functions (on our dime, of course.
Had another thought about this. The Presidential Emergency Operations Center is under the East Wing. Who knows, perhaps an upgrade is occurring to it along with adding a ballroom.
You should know better.
You didn’t have thought #1 yet.
It’s amazing what cable news can do to people. I have a lot of problems, but “White House construction” doesn’t even make the top 100. Maybe 1,000.
If ‘Autocratic American President lies about demolishing sections of the White House without notice for pretentious vanity project while Government employees go without pay’ doesn’t move up on your list a few places, it could be argued that your list may need some work.
I think the real problem might be the liberals have just never seen construction before?
Regardless, there’s an easy solution to the workers not being paid. Tell Chuck Schumer to stop holding the government hostage because his party lost one election.
That’s true. I’ve never seen Trump do anything constructive. Just destructive. And stupid. And corrupt.
And tell Mike Johnson to stop holding government hostage so he can cut health care for the American public and give tax cuts to billionaires.
God, you’re easy to refute.
Mike Johnson passed the same clean CR that was passed 10+ times under Biden.
Chuck Schumer voted no for the 10th time tonight.
These are literal facts.
Bob, we went through this same shit last March. Rs promised to negotiate on ACA, so Schumer caved and caught hell from his party for it. Right after the CR went through Rs reneged.
So that nickel’s spent, negotiating before the CR is the only way left. Sorry to have to explain this, doubt you’ll understand.
Change the headline to $300 million going to poor people and you’ll have FOX News and the rest of the GOP Pravda going nuts about socialism and freeloaders, because someone might actually get something useful that could change their lives.
$300 million to a useless ballroom for King Nothing’s decadence? Ah, its a nothing burger.
It’s private money, and while we don’t need a ballroom, neither will a ballroom do any harm. If you look at it that way – costs nothing, does no harm – it’s the best thing Trump has ever done.
Granted, that is a low hurdle to clear.
This article from the BBC only mentions $22 million in private funding for the ballroom.
Trump has claimed he will pay for things before, like his presidential campaigns. I will believe it only after it happens.
You make a good point.
We have only his word that he and outside benefactors will pay for it. I must have temporarily lost my mind when I was thinking it might be the truth. He also told us that the ballroom would not interfere with the existing building, and instructed Leavitt to tell us that nothing would be torn down.
I believe absolute jack shit of his commentary about where money comes from. It’s absolutely coming out of taxpayer money somehow.
I believe him. He has shown again and again that he is an honest man, so honest that Abraham Lincoln is now known as Not-as-honest-as-Trump Abe.
Compared to his other cost-benefit lies it’s probably more truthful. It’s a wasteful piece of shit, but at least he’s not promoting it at a job creator. It’s amazing how little shit he and the GOP got from the Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin when the state spend tens of millions of taxpayer money to build infrastructure, with Foxconn haphazardly trying to hire people to sit around in an empty building to secure the trickle down tax incentives. Virtually no mainstream coverage of that outside of some tech outlets.
Not as upfront and out in the open like tearing down history of a landmark for a gaudy waste of money, so people seem not to give much of shit and move onto the next part of the news cycle with whatever bullshit is the next lie.
To be serious for a second, I’m reserving judgment until we’ve seen the actual product. I’m not going to berate it just because it was Trump’s idea.
Although I can’t imagine those struggling soybean farmers being excited about a ballroom that covers 25,000 square feet of floor space. You’d think the President would have more important things on his mind.
The two-story office portion of the East Wing is (well, WAS) basically a big box, just a pedestrian office building. That can easily be improved upon. After all, it was just built to be functional (to create office space and to hide a bomb shelter). That’s not exactly a rich piece of history.
The original East Wing, which was basically a grand facade to be used as a side entrance, was lovely. That really was something worth retaining, and I’m disappointed to discover that it will not be rebuilt exactly as it was.
Note:
As far as I can see, people have complained about every change to the White House & grounds, even Truman’s rebuild – and he really had no choice, given that the place was falling apart and lacked modern plumbing and electrical service.
Yes, you have many, MANY problems, Trutherbob. That much is obvious. I can easily believe you have 1,000.
More money wasted over bullshit. Just like the Iran missiles that did nothing, the national guard deployments to pick up trash, the Gravy SEALS ICE ambushes to arrest laborers and grandmas, the tariffs every consumer has to pay for, and so on. Meanwhile we have the GOP bitching about budget, firing people with jobs, and not paying for healthcare.
Oh man. You gotta stop watching so much CNN and MSNBC. Wow.
Yeah dude. Also ignore all of your senses (especially your lyin’ eyes), logic, common sense, and thoughts. Remember, Trump is all – just work outward from there.
You need a new tinfoil hat
I don’t need a news source to see what anyone with common sense can see. People off the street showing national guard doing gardening or walking around the national mall bored as hell. Or ICE busting out windows dragging off old women or shooting reporters with sandbags on the street.
Unlike you, I don’t need FOX or Newsmax to tell me to turn off my brain and not believe my lyin’ eyes and surrender to the propaganda. The data is out there on what’s going on, whether you’re too fucking stupid to understand it is your problem.
The whole point of this addition is obviously that Trump wants to host fundraising events/shakedowns so he can be surrounded by oligarchs and sycophants all the time and rack up the millions. He just has to ask and he gets all the money he wants! If he can’t bring the White House to Mar-a-lago, he’ll bring Mar-a-lago to the White House. So of course that addition is completely useless for anybody else. Have you seen the mockups? The thing is basically bigger than the whole White House, casting a big shadow over it. It’s just stupid and pointless.
The kind of kings, emperors, dictators, and other authoritarian/totalitarian leaders that are obsessed with their own power and image usually want some kind of monumental palace to reflect their glory. See Versailles, for example. But for gods sake, don’t show it to Trump.
Too late, where do you think he’s basing the Oval off of? Though it actually turned out more ‘New Orleans whorehouse’.