Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / 'Detonate that East Wing, just tear it down!' Critic says Dems should raze Trumps ballroom

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'Detonate that East Wing, just tear it down!' Critic says Dems should raze Trumps ballroom · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has a lot of pet projects across Washington,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: but the one he seems to talk about the most
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is the big, beautiful ballroom that he is building after
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House. Trump
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: has said many times that his ballroom will be the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: finest of its kind in the world. He has also
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: said many times that the project will be fully funded
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: by private donors and not taxpayers.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Like you, we didn't ask.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: For any tax money.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: We have no taxes.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: As tax payer free, we have no taxpayer putting up
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: ten cents.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: That statement, like so many things with this Trump residency,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: was of course, a lie. According to new reporting from
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post Quote, the Trump administration plans to spend
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: at least nine hundred million dollars for construction projects on
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the White House grounds, a significantly larger price tag than
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: has been previously reported, and one that would be covered
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: primarily taxpayers. According to records reviewed by the Post, and
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the projected cost of the East Wing construction alone was
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: six hundred million dollars, with half of that coming from taxpayers. Remember,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Trump initially said that the cost would be two hundred
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: million dollars. What a bargain, And all that money would
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: come from private donations. The post notes that the money
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: for these construction projects is being routed through a small
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: White House office which typically holds just a few million
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: dollars and handles smaller upkeep type projects. Joining me now
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to discuss all of this is Julie Roginsky, democratic strategist
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and author of the Salty Politics newsletter on subs deck,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and Tim O'Brien, senior executive editor at Bloomberg Opinion and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: ms NOW political analysts. So, Tim, the common denominator denominator
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of so many of these Trump vanity projects is this
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: sidestepping of Congress and hiding of specific details like scope
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and cost and where the money is coming from. And
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the ballroom in many ways seems to be the most
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: egregious of all of these.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: But my question to you is which is.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Worse, Having the money come from private companies that he
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: is shaking down, maybe for some kind of quid pro quo,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: or having the money come from taxpayers who he is
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: bilking and who do not have a say at all
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: in whether they fund this project.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: I will dodge having to answer that directly by saying
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: they're both equally bad, okay, and they're but they're but
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: they're bad for different reasons. And and on the one hand,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: you know, you've got Congress, which constitutionally is meant to
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: retain the power of the purse, and so many times
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: in this administration and Republican controlled Congress has simply allowed
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: the president to run circles around them. And it's not
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: just a matter of prerogative or power. It's about making
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: sure money isn't improperly appropriated or improperly allocated, and that
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: American taxpayers know what is being done with their hard
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: earned wages that have been turned into tax payments to
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: the federal government. It's particularly peculiar, troubling and bad that
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: a Republican administration is doing this when historically Republicans have
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: invaded against the misuse of tax dollars and big government.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: So that's problematic. Secondly, it is problematic that taxpayers have
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: to foot what is essentially a gargantuan vanity project that's
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: being routed in a very nebulous and opaque way by design,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: I believe, because if Trump wanted to ensure that taxpayers
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: weren't going to be on the hook for any of
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: these projects, and that everything that was being done was
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: above board, that for example, donors to these projects couldn't
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: curry favor with the administration, i e. Use these projects
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: as a form of a b or that the money
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: was being spent in the way that Trump actually says.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: It says it's planning to which we have no clear
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: idea whether or not that's even going to happen. There's
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: all sorts of malfeasants hanging off this that should trouble
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: anybody who cares about good government.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean not to mention, we don't know who
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: these contracts are going to and what kind of process
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that looks like. Julie, So in a midterm election year
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that is largely about affordability and economic outcomes and resentment
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: about the success of the Trump economic agenda or lack thereof,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: do you think something like this, you know, spending a
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: billion dollars on White House vanity projects is likely to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: break through.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: It is so emblematic of the corruption and so emblematic
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: of the waste that I think it's actually the best
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: visual representation of everything that people are complaining about. Look,
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: I'm going to give some free advice to whichever presidential
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: candidate wants to take it. Whoever wants to be president
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: needs to simply say that the very first act of
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: that person's going to do at twelve oh one pm
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: on January twenty ninth, twenty eth excuse me, twenty twenty nine.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Is detonate that East Wing. Just tear it down.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: I don't care how much a cost and tax payer money,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: not because there's not bigger priorities in the world, but
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: because it is just so emblematic of everything else that
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: if you're tearing that down, you're tearing down the entire
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: corrupt structure of this administration, all of the waste, all
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: of the fraud, all of the abuse that Republicans always
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: talk about. This is it in one fell swoop. And
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: this is something that is very easy because it's so visual.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: We're a visual people, where a visual electorate. And when
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: people see something like this coming up at their expense or,
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: as ten pointed out, the expense of potentially companies that
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: are being shaken down, all it tells you is that
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: he's not focusing on the price of gas. He's not
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: focusing on what things cost to the grocery store.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: He's not focusing on.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: How to put your kids through college or buy them
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: a little league uniform or anything else. He's focusing on himself,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: building a big, beautiful ballroom.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Gold for himself, beautiful, and I'm the beholder. But nevertheless,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: you know, this is what he's focused on.
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: He's basically that same shady developer who all of us
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: who grew up in New York or remember from the eighties,
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: who's now taking taxpayer dollars and using it to build
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: himself yet another gilded palace now in the people's house.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: And it's just something that people can understand viscerally and
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: be offended by, and it's emblematic of everything else.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you're right that it is much
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: more visual than some of the other corruption scandals like
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: who's buying Trump crypto and things like that, Like that's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit more.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Abstract and even better question.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: But yes, yes, I mean these are all excellent questions,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and I wish people had infinite bandwidth to pay attention
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: to all of them. But given our constraints that we
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: face in reality, very good visual here