Donald Trump wants his fcking ballroom and everyone else can go ahead and run for president (Good luck even holding an election, if Trump is bouncing around with signs saying “Trump 2028, Yes,” Why even hold an election for a man who is fully above the law?), because not only is Trump building his goddamned ballroom, the original vision is exploding in size and gild to suit his kitsch taste. According to a report in The New York Times, Trump has personally taken over the project, and like the Kennedy Center, everything Trump touches is superficial, skin-deep, all in homage to him, personally, and too much is never enough; it is getting bigger, more ostentatious, and this is as predictable as winter; it will be his downfall.
As you surely know, this is precisely the stuff that Trump loves as president. He cannot be bothered with worrying about your sh*tty Obamacare exchange, he wants his ballroom, and by god, it cannot be big enough, according to mother Times:
In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.
Abso-fcking-lutely, make it 1,500 people! Host the WWE smackdown! Pro-wrestling is every bit as real as this administration’s adherence to constitutional principles that got us this far, the ones that ironically “Made America Great” in the first place, now all shoved aside as nothing more than a rallying call for “White Alpha Male dominance.” So build that damned ballroom, make it as big as possible, after all, in this AI-driven gilded age, money is no object! Make it pure gold for all I care, it’ll be as beautiful and classy as the casinos at Niagara Falls! This is Trump we’re talking about.
Mr. Trump is aware of the criticism that his ballroom plans are too large. He told a group of donors to the project last month that he didn’t want the new ballroom to “dwarf anything.” But at the same event, in discussing related plans to construct a Triumphal Arch, Mr. Trump showed small, medium and large options. “I happen to think the large looks by far the best,” he said.
More is never enough! Shame every other nation! After all, we have the most powerful dictator in the world. The article notes that Trump brags to people that, as president, he can do whatever he wants, and has installed allies in the key positions such that no one says “boo” when he wants to move to the bigger, more “golden” type.
But that payment method means going around Congress to fund the project, cutting legislators out of having any say over its direction. “The White House is one of the great buildings in this country. It’s the so-called people’s palace,” said Richard Guy Wilson, professor emeritus of architectural history at the University of Virginia. “This new ballroom that’s going up, it’s gigantic, and unfortunately, it’s going to sort of dominate.”
At some point oncoming, Trump is going to float the idea that it be named after him. He is the one demanding the funding; it is practically a private project that “he” is paying for by giving kickbacks to the Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg crowd, he is simply monetizing the presidency in ways no one thought possible until him – until him, no one wanted to, the presidency was about history, not money. But not Trump.
Obama had his name tied to healthcare that saved perhaps millions of lives as his “monument.” Trump wants gold. He will whisper to the right person that this beast really should be named after him, and the ballroom will come to symbolize everything that is Trump. It was corrupt at birth, it is a monument to corruption, to money, it will forever remain as one man’s vanity project, and when the economy turns down, as it is surely about to, it will stand out as symbolizing everything that ever matters to Trump, while unemployment and economic inequality set in. Actual people will die.
But he will have a lovely place, he’s thinking 2029, have no doubt, to toast Putin, MBS, and other political terrorists who “rule” rather than govern. A mad king.
I continually write that everything that Trump continues to get away with, including this never-to-be-damned enough building, all the naked corruption, the gifts of gold, firing everyone who so much as looks at him wrong, all of it, has been done in a stable, or even good economy. The American people – the independents, or the fairly moderate typical “white suburban man” who may vote GOP and Trump because he’s “sick of being told how to think” will forgive nearly anything in a good economy. But if history teaches us anything it is that it all shifts the moment words like “recession” or “market correction,” indeed – “bubble,” start floating around, just as it’s happening today. Been to the grocery store lately? You’re better off just ordering from Pizza Hut. That’s not a joke.
In times like these, Americans hold leaders responsible, and “Trump 2028, Yes” can turn into a massive “No,” so fast it will make him reconsider the gold bricks and cryptotokesn he’s been given.
That ballroom will be there, half finished, looking more and more like Versailles, a fitting “monument” to a man too self-obsessed to ever read any history. It will become the focal point of a pushback unlike any this country has seen.
The question will be, has he fortified that “fortress” in Washington DC such that he absolutely will host people in his ballroom in 2029? It is possible. Indeed, it is probably 50-50 at best that “the people” have the strength to overrun the only wall he’s ever built, solidifying his junta. But if anything can bring him down, it will take a turning point on a historic scale, perhaps with a 1,500-person ballroom to symbolize it all, to bring it about.
Call me a naive optimist lacking requisite cynicism, but I think it will happen. The people will overthrow him, and that ballroom will play an “outsized role.” So, yes, make it bigger, more shiny, more statues, all of it, go big and then bigger.
When cults build monuments, too much is never enough, right up until it definitively is.
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