No president in American history has managed to build a White House ballroom, a fact Trump has cited repeatedly as justification for demolishing the East Wing and starting from scratch.
On Thursday, a federal judge blocked the above-ground construction for the second time. Trump responded on Truth Social with a national security argument that the judge had already rejected once and was not about to accept a second time.
Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a new order Thursday halting above-ground construction on Trump’s $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, finding that the administration had been using what he called “fancy footwork” to sidestep his previous ruling.
The administration had argued that a security exception in Leon’s earlier order meant the entire ballroom could proceed. Leon was unmoved. “Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated. That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my Order!” he wrote, with notable emphasis.
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Trump’s response arrived on Truth Social with considerable length.
“The White House doesn’t have a Ballroom (No Taxpayer Money!), which Presidents have desperately wanted and desired for over 150 years, but a Trump Hating, Washington, D.C. District Court Judge, a man who has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built, is attempting to prevent future Presidents and World Leaders from having a safe and secure large scale Meeting Place, or Ballroom,” he wrote, in a single sentence that kept going well past the point most sentences stop.
The ballroom, Trump argued, would feature “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass.” He declared it
“Militarily Imperative” and accused the judge of “illegal overreach,” calling the ruling “a mockery to our Court System.” The ballroom, in Trump’s telling, is less a venue for state dinners than a fortified military installation that happens to have a dance floor.
In a separate post, Trump added that the judge’s decision “severely jeopardizes the lives and welfare of the people who work, and will be working, at the White House – including all future Presidents of the United States, and their families.”
Leon directly addressed that argument. “National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” he wrote, adding that the ballroom’s planned security features “are still months, if not years, away from being realized,” which undermined the administration’s claim of immediate irreparable harm.
He allowed below-ground construction to continue, including the bunker, military installations and medical facilities, but drew a clear line at the dance floor above it.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
