Bulwark Takes - BOMBSHELL: Trump’s Ballroom to Cost Taxpayers $300 Million

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Sam Stein and JVL give their takes on a bombshell new report from the Washington Post showing Trump's White House ballroom project could cost more than $600 million with taxpayers footing half the bill. They break down the ballooning price tag, the demolition of the East Wing, and whether a future president should just tear the whole thing down.Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/bulwarktakes to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.

Hey, everybody's me. Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bork, and I'm joined by JVL. We're going to be talking about the East Wing Ballroom, which I know this is going to shock a lot of people. See, might want to sit down, grab a glass of water in case you need to hydrate. It's going to cost more than Donald Trump said it was by a significant amount. And even though he said it was going to be paid for strictly by private funds and his own money, records now show that the taxpayers will be on the hook for more than half of it. I know. We're all very surprised by this.

This is from The Washington Post, which this morning dropped. I consider like a mini bomb show if I had to rate it. Titleist Records reveal 600 million estimate for Trump's ballroom project with half from taxpayers. If you recall JVL, the initial estimate that Donald Trump made was 200 million, then 300 million, then 400 million. Then he said, well, maybe there'll be a little bit of taxpayer money just for the bottom part where we're doing. security. Turns out none of that was true is all bullshit and who could have foreseen this. I mean, Sam, originally, the East Wing wasn't going to be touched. Do you remember that? I mean, everything about this project has been a lie. It's like George Costanza is running the White

House. Yeah, no, the East Wing is not going to be touched. It's going to be very small. It was a very small, very tasteful ballroom next to the East Wing. And then, well, we have to tear down the east wing. Next, like, oh, the East Wing's already gone. I'm sorry that we have to do that. The East Wing's already gone. And then the ballroom kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you recall, there were big disputes because the architect behind it was like,

sir, so this is, this is way too big. And Trump's like, make it bigger. Computer, enlarge, enlarge, enlarge, enlarge, enlarge. Yeah, the initial plan was to have it taller than the actual West Wing. and then they're like, no, that's not going to be architecturally sound. So they tried to make level with the edifice. But you were right. The initial plan was to have an actual ballroom that was adjacent to and they knocked it down.

Now, I should note that the thing is mired in some legal difficulty and political difficulty. So there's been essentially a stop order placed on construction above ground. They're allowing the below ground portion to continue. And then on top of that, as you might recall, after the White House Correspondents Association dinner, when there was an attempt to the assassination. Lindsay Graham went to the floor and said, no, we got to pay $400 million, taxpayer funds, let's do it. And a number of Republicans are like, actually, no, that's not,

we don't want to do that. So now the question is, well, what comes next? And I actually don't know. Like, is there just going to be this kind of gaping hole here? Surely I don't see how Congress will appropriate taxpayer funds for this. But at the same time, there's this big gaping hole on the White House grounds. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how it's going to proceed.

I can tell you the different things that would be funny if it proceeded. It would be funny if Congress refused to appropriate funds. And Trump did like what he has done with the Kennedy Center, which is just fine, I'll leave it. Just leave the hole in the ground. Yeah, put a big, big, that would be very funny. TARP over it. Yeah. Or, you know, maybe have the tarp.

I have a picture of his face with the fight symbol. or something so that everybody could see his face when they come to fly into Reagan National into DCA. That would be very funny. But Sam, part of me, part of me hopes they build it. I knew you're going to say this. I knew you're going to say this. I knew you're going to say it down. I was actually going to ask about that.

I was going to ask about that. Day one. And not even have a conversation about it. Just be like, nope, sorry. We're going to knock it down. Then we're going to rebuild the East Wing. And then we're going to pass a law which governs this shit. That was what I was going to ask you is what should.

So let's assume that whatever they, the next Democrat president takes office, let's assume it's 2029. And this thing is kind of like, what? Half built, maybe? I don't know. Whatever. It's not finished. Your advice is just knock the fucker down. And other people have been asking, they're like, well, no, we're not going to knock it down because that's just wasting money that we've done.

But we're not going to make it a ballroom. What's the, why knock it down? Is that it just because it's a corrupt act that led to this place? So you have to knock it down because the message to future authoritarian has to be like the end of Avengers, right? The end of the Avengers movie when Tony Stark comes out and he says to Loki, look, you can do whatever you want, but you got to understand that it's all on you. There is no throne. There's no end of this where you get what you want. And so will it waste money to knock it down?

Yes. But the message has to be to the future aspiring strongmen do what you want. We will knock it down and replace it with. exactly what was there beforehand down to the brick. And this idea of like cleverly like, oh, well, we'll name it for George Floyd. Now, you do shit like that. And then the next guy can simply name it for Donald Trump. You've got to bite the bullet and create the predicate, which is you want to try to do

this stuff. That's fine. But understand that we will knock it down. We will revert back. I hadn't heard about the George Floyd idea. No, I hear you. I didn't heard about the George Floyd idea. I would argue, don't do that.

And I kind of see what you're coming from. It's like, you need to wipe the slate clean. You need to acknowledge that this is what he did. And this is the other thing is like, and maybe you can ray on this one. I was talking with some friends of mine about all the sort of crazy things that Trump has done, obviously, in his return to office. And I asked them sort of a specific question, like putting aside the morality of it, the legality of it, just in terms of sheer craziness, like an act that you fundamentally. When you think about, you're like, how could he do that? To me, knocking down the East Wing actually is the top one.

Because it's not his house. And he just showed up one day and he just bulldozed it. And it's different than like, oh, I'm going to redo the reflecting pool or I'm going to put my name on the Kennedy Center. He literally took a good portion of the White House. It was just like, you know what? I don't care if there's laws. I'm just going to knock it down. That to me is like the standout bad shit crazy.

step that the administration took. It shows the degree to which he conflates the state and himself. I mean, that's what this is really about, right? This is let's saymois, right? And this is Trump saying the White House belongs to him, right? He's the president. America is his. So he gets to do whatever he want.

And this is, so getting back to the Washington Post story, there's something I found interesting about this. So the federal funds were baked into this were coming from the Secret Service. for the most part. I would wager that in Trump's mind, he does not view secret service money as taxpayer money. Because the secret service is,

that's his Praetorian Guard. He is allowed to do whatever that. That's his money. Taxpayer money to him is like something that somebody passes in a budget. Now, I understand secret service money is allocated through a budget. But I'm just talking about the way that Trump's mind works

is, well, the secret service don't work. for America. They work for him. They're his. They are loyal to him. And so that's his money and he can use that however he wants. If you really want to know what's really, really worth your time when it comes to losing weight, well, you can skip the guesswork and you just get weight loss by HIMS. HIMS offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications that now includes the Ragovi pill and the Ragovi pen plus lifestyle tips to support you along the way. With Wagovi at Hymns, you can can lose up to 20% or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. And folks, this is not natural.

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and restrictions, you got to go to hymns.com. So the post writes that the White House officials received a preliminary estimate July 11th, so that's almost a year ago, projecting that the construction would cost $270 million, with over $100 million coming from taxpayers through the Secret Service and the White House military office. So even in the early, early stages, they had $100 million from, taxpayer funds. Now, I would just say, I agree with you, but I also think Trump doesn't quite understand the appropriations process. My guess is that he looks at that and he's like, oh, it's already

been appropriated and it's a bucket of money that lives somewhere. Ergo, this is not a new taxpayer expense because it's the sunk cost, right? And so I get to use it however I want. But that's crazy. And then, of course, experts who work on this stuff for living are like, actually no, like, the Secret Service funds cannot go to a largely ceremonial ballroom. Maybe they can be used in small little tidbits here and there for protection of principles, which is their mission. But it doesn't go for this ostentatious gold-plated ballroom that you have lined up here. Anyways, the project then completely gets out of hand.

Now it's over 600 million, over 300 million of that coming from those accounts. And there's no end in sight. I mean, like, who knows where this thing ends up. but anyone could have told you that it was never going to be $270 million. Do you think the people who have donated money to the Ballroom Fund? Do you think they get any of their money back if this all falls apart? Do we even know who the donors are? And in Donald Trump's crypto, probably.

No, here's the other question. Like, why can't Elon? Elon's got too trill right now? This is his buddy. Hey, help us out, buddy. So second question, and here's the reason I don't want them to build it. my faith that a Democratic president would bite the bullet and actually demolish it is like I think it should be non-existent you should have no very very very low because I think you get a

president let's President Rafael Warnock they come in even if their instinct is to knock it down they will they will be surrounding people say oh well that's wasteful and you know we should we could just repurpose it and you know if you do that you're going to be picking a fight we should Save our political cabinet. Don't we really want to increase medical coverage and health care coverage for average Americans? We want to focus on kitchen table issues. We don't want to get into this culture war and the Republicans will be so mad about it. And this is my question to you, Sam.

Do you think Democrats will be willing to actually fight sort of the Reconstruction era version of Trump? Are you saying Reconstruction? as in a parallel to post-Sivil War? Are we talking about like literal reconstruction? Okay. No, I mean, I mean the sort of the debathification, the attempt to to totally re-engineer the federal government in ways to future-proof us against another authoritarian attempt. No, I don't, I don't, first of all, I'm not totally, the way you now phrased it where it's like,

well, there are other fights to pick. I kind of agree a little bit. I can't disagree with you. Like there are other ways to spend money in more important manners. But to answer your question about like the sort of fundamental DNA of Democrats, this is not. They would never do. Obviously they're not going to pick this fight because there are other fights to pick, frankly. And I just don't want to see a stupid-ass ballroom that has like Trump's name on it.

And I don't think we're going to get that. But there are real questions about, okay, you come in and there was like half an edifice there. And you got to figure out what to do with it. And that's a real question that they're going to have to deal with. I don't think they're going to level it, though. This is what I want people to understand. It's not about the ballroom. It's about sending a message.

And the truth is, if you can send a message for $400 million, that is a bargain at twice the price. And I wish I could get Democrats to understand this. You can't because Democrats basically are policy nerds running for class president who, like, they have policy objectives. They have laws they want to pass. They have things they would like the Federal Trade Commission to do. They're not interested in culture wars, really. And that is why they are a reasonably healthy governing party. Unfortunately, you do need a little bit of the other stuff right now.

Yeah, no, and before we close up, because the other side of the coin is the Republicans here, which is the very people who are like totally fine with Trump bulldozing this stuff and Linty Graham reversing himself and saying, yeah, we'll spend money on it. Who cares? if a Democrat were to come into office and say, I'm bulldozing the system building my own thing, they would flip. How dare you? They would not understand it.

So that's the reality we deal with. All right, buddy, I'm excited to read your boring-ass triad today, although you do apparently a lot of handholding, and I'm excited for that too. So we'll see. Anything you want to say on that? A little promo or now. Boy, if you are interested in how global financial systems and banking work, do I have a newsletter for you? This is, you know, like the ice bucket challenge?

We ought to have like a triad challenge. I defy you to make it to the end of this thing. All right, JVL, you know what he does? He writes the triad. It's a must read, honestly, whether it's about boring banking or anything else. I'm Sam Stein, managing it at the bulwark. Subscribe to our feed where you get great conversations like this. Peace.