Humpty Trumpty Sat on a Ball(room)

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Having seen Trump shuffle spasmodically to the Village People’s Y.M.C.A., I think we can rule out dancing as the motivation to construct a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood.

We can also rule out the most recent reason given for the construction of such a Reichskanzlei, which is that only in a Führerbunker funded by tech bros and Epstein patrons will this president ever feel safe.

This leads us back to the original intent of the Trump administration with all its tariffs, foreign wars, Musk budget cuts, and endless boondoggles (like the “free” Qatari airplane): graft and corruption to the sole benefit of Thirty Percenter (normally his take on the vig) Donald J. Trump, proprietor.

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Trump never ran for the office of the president to participate in the great democratic experiment of a free people. In 2016, the insolvent Trump descended on his escalator from heaven to escape his creditors.

In 2024, he ran again, this time to dodge looming jail sentences and to convert the presidency into a private equity concern for his own benefit and that of his weird, grifting extended family (Cf. Melania’s $40 million shakedown of Amazon in exchange for some home movies or Eric’s $24 million drone contract from Daddy’s Pentagon).

Turning the White House into a gaudy timeshare casino resort and hotel ballroom is just part of the same IPO plan for the executive branch of government.

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If you’re a real estate developer, one of the few pleasures of the job is to use building sites (the bigger the better) to pad expenses and shake down outside contractors for a slice of the action.

The ballroom project began with the midnight destruction of the White House’s East Wing. (If any average American citizen tore down an historic capital building, presumably he or she would be arrested and sent to jail, unless it happened on “a beautiful day”, such as January 6.)

Neither Congress nor any oversight body approved this demolition, but Trump went ahead with his take-down as his family has done countless times in New York City—knowing that once the old building has been torn down, the banks (or in this case the Congress) will have to go along with your plans, given that there’s only a hole in the ground.

By Trump’s own boastful words (“I’m paying for it…”), the money to build the new ballroom would come from him and a circle of “very rich people” and companies.

Because it was off the books of the U.S. government, there would be no reason to get congressional or other regulatory approval. In 2025, Trump put the cost of construction at $250 million (not counting the missiles in the basement). Later, the price increased to $350 million (for the same number of ballers), and now the gilded cage is estimated at $400 million (but it will not be ready for this summer’s Ultimate Fighting Championship card to be staged on the White House lawn the day of Trump’s birthday).

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One thing “very rich people” don’t do is give away their money. They make charitable deductions if they get tax breaks or some other incentive, but it’s hard to see how a donation to the U.S. government (nominally the owner of the White House) or the National Parks Service (which manages it) qualifies for a tax deduction (unless you only pay $750 in income taxes but are suing the IRS for $10 billion). So I have to assume that the dividends are coming in other packages.

If you search around, you can find a list of 37 donors who are standing by to stump up the money for Trump’s Grand Ballroom and Hotel Resort Complex.

Mostly it’s the pay-to-play crowd—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Lockheed, etc.—although a few names on the list, such as the Union Pacific Railroad, have specific merger requests pending before the Trump administration, for which they are seeking approval.

Then there are all the tech bros doing meme business with Don Jr. and Eric (who themselves are fronting for Mafia Don) who must dream about holding their crypto-conferences (at which they all load up on $TRUMP or MELANIA coins) at the DJT Potomac Grand, where they can celebrate the slights-of-coin that allow them to backhand millions directly into the pocket of the American president.

As well, the ballroom “donor list” has companies that are trying to resolve their tariff problems with Trump, such as the Luxembourg steel company, ArcelorMittal, that is giving the White House $37 million in foreign steel (i.e., Make America Second Again…) but then, on the other side, looking for tariff relief to import Canadian steel into the United States.

Think of this exchange from The Godfather:

Virgil Sollozzo: Bene, Don Corleone. I need a man who has powerful friends. I need a million dollars in cash. I need, Don Corleone, all of those politicians that you carry around in your pocket, like so many nickels and dimes.

Sollozzo: Thirty percent. In the first year your end should be three, four million dollars. And then it would go up.

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Finally, the ballroom donors include such Epstein Listers as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick who must be grateful to Trump for making “the files” disappear in a haze of black redacted ink.

As you will recall, Secretary Lutnick was Epstein’s next-door neighbor in 2005 who, after touring through the pedophile’s town house (all those dungeons with handcuffs on the walls, etc.), said he would never again cross paths with such a dangerous pervert. But then, in 2012, Lutnick took his wife and children to Epstein’s island in the Caribbean (which puts a new spin on the idea of a family vacation).

More than 10 percent of the donors to the ballroom project are either frequent flyers or islanders. Maybe the Latin phrase, Non Sum Stuprator (“I am not a rapist”), can be engraved over the ballroom mantlepiece?

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Of course, Trump himself never pays anything, and by the time you get around to looking over the donor list of 37 names you will not the Donald J. Trump Foundation listed (largely because it was shut down in 2018 for misusing charitable funds).

Even if it was still in operation, it would not be lining up to give anything to the Make-a-Presidential-Wish Foundation (in this case, a $400 million ballroom for some Village People line dancing), because Trump’s goal is now to bait-and-switch the nation and get Congress to pay for his leaky dream.

No sooner had Cole Tomas Allen been tackled at the Washington Hilton than the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SHILL) were corralling microphones to say that the American Way of Life depended on Congress taking over the $400 million funding for Trump’s ballroom.

The Graham Amendment solves many problems. It gets Trump and his E-listers off the hook for paying for public housing (not something they support). Plus, it allows Trump to overrun the construction costs to, say, $800 million..

I am sure that the Venezuelan oil account or favor bags from the Gulf States pay better, but it’s not a bad day’s work for selling the American people a white elephant that no one wants or needs.