When President Donald Trump started bemoaning the size of the East Room during an executive order signing just weeks into his second term, it may have seemed like the gripe was coming out of thin air.
But the real estate developer-turned-politician has been wanting to build a White House ballroom for years.
‘This room is packed and – you know I offered to build a ballroom,’ he said at the event in early February.
‘I’m very good at building ballrooms. I build beautiful ballrooms. And I actually offered to build a ballroom for the White House.
He noted that it would be like the 20,000 square foot addition ‘like I have at Mar-a-Lago.’
‘It was going to cost $100 million dollars, I offered to do it. And I never heard back. I offered this – I offered to do it for the Biden administration,’ he revealed.
During this retelling of the story, Trump said he had a vision of the historic East Room serving as the ballroom’s reception room.
What’s more likely is that he could build a ballroom in the East Wing, which is located down the East Colonnade from the main White House residence.
And when the 78-year-old president originally made the pitch it was to a different Democratic administration, and the ballroom was a pop-up, as detailed in the 2015 memoir of President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod.
Axelrod wrote that in 2010 – amid the Gulf oil spill – Trump called him and made two brash offers.
The most likely location for a Trump ballroom would be the East Wing. In the past, parts of the South Lawn have been used for tents to house state dinners in first the Obama administration and later by President Joe Biden
Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive on New Year’s Eve at his Mar-A-Lago Club
JD Vance and Usha Chillukiri Vance arrive on New Year’s Eve at Mar-A-Lago club
‘Listen,’ Axelrod said he was told by Trump. ‘That admiral you have down there running this leak operation seems like a nice guy, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
‘I know how to run big projects,’ the real estate developer said. ‘Put me in charge of this thing, and I’ll get that leak shut down and the damage repaired.’
Axelrod assured Trump that the Gulf oil spill was being plugged – to which Trump went in for his second pitch.
‘But I’ve got another thing for you. I build ballrooms. Beautiful ballrooms. You can go to Tampa and check one of them out for yourself,’ Axelrod recalled Trump telling him.
Trump was likely talking about Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom in Palm Beach.
‘I see you have these state dinners on the lawn there in these s***ty little tents,’ Trump continued, Axelrod said. ‘Let me build you a ballroom you can assemble and take apart. Trust me. It’ll look great.’
Axelrod later said he shoved the idea off to the Obama White House’s social secretary at the time and the conversation ended there. When contacted by DailyMail.com she had no immediate memory of the request.
But Trump didn’t let it go.
The Obamas erected a tent for a state dinner for the first time in White House history in 2009. Donald Trump, then a real estate developer, thought it was tacky and offered to build something better according to Obama adviser David Axelrod
President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago ballroom was a 20,000-square-foot addition to the historic property that he purchased in 1985
A year later, while appearing on the late Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, Trump ranted about the lack of a decent White House ballroom again.
‘As you know, ’cause you’re in Palm Beach, I have the greatest ballroom probably in the world. I built it five years ago, and it’s one of the great ballrooms of the world. It’s at the Mar-a-Lago Club,’ Trump boasted.
‘And I see that the White House – the White House, Washington, D.C. – when a dignitary comes in from India, from anywhere, they open up a tent. They have a tent. A tent!’ he continued.
Trump called it a ‘lousy looking tent,’ adding ‘an old, rotten tent that frankly they probably rented, pay a guy millions of dollars for it even though it’s worth about $2, OK?’
President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod
Barack Obama gives a kiss to his wife first lady Michelle Obama
He then revealed to Limbaugh that he had made the pitch to Axelrod, though didn’t use the Obama official’s name.
‘I’m talking to the biggest person, one of the biggest people at the White House. I’m not talking to a low-level person,’ Trump said.
In this version the future president said he told Axelrod: ‘I will build it free.’
‘They never got back to me. It’s a hundred million-dollar gift. They never got back to me,’ Trump fumed.
Limbaugh, a prominent conservative, replied: ‘Of course not! They think you’re a Republican.’
President Joe Biden used what appeared to be the same tent as President Barack Obama to host his 2023 state dinner with Australia. Biden repositioned it in an area of the South Lawn that would better accommodate Trump’s ballroom vision
Obama gestures as he speaks about the economy as president
‘Well, but they never got back to me Rush … whether I’m a Republican or an independent or a Democrat, they never got back to me,’ Trump said. ‘If I was a Republican, they should do it anyway! They should say, ‘Trump’s gonna give us a hundred million dollars. He’s gonna build the ballroom! It’s gonna be magnificent!”
‘Why wouldn’t they get back to me? That’s the problem with this country. It’s like no common sense,’ the businessman complained.
Around this time, Trump started flirting with entering politics, though he sat out the 2012 presidential race that would have pit him against Obama.
But as he got closer to the White House, the ballroom dream was still there.
On the eve of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, the first time Trump’s name was before voters, he made a bold pledge.
‘We’ll have a ballroom at the White House,’ Trump said.
He then recounted his pitch to Axelrod to a group of Sioux City voters.
Time Magazine reached out to the Obama adviser to fact-check what Trump said.
‘I don’t recall him saying he would pay for it,’ Axelrod said.
Cut to Trump’s second term and the ballroom idea seems to have come back to life – as the president has made other design changes, like the goldening of the Oval Office.
He also plans to add two large American flag poles on the White House grounds and has floated paving over the green space in the Rose Garden so it can be better used for hosting events.
As for something off the East Room, one former East Wing staffer said that was highly unlikely.
‘Making physical changes in the residence, including East Room is difficult and this seems physically impossible,’ the former staffer said.
With a pop-up ballroom seemingly off the table, another former East Wing official told DailyMail.com that the East Wing – generally where the first lady her her offices – could be reconfigured in such a way to tend to Trump’s needs.
‘I don’t think it’s impossible,’ the official said. ‘I’m not an engineer or a construction expert but it certainly doesn’t seem impossible that you could restructure the East Wing to create a large ballroom to the president’s liking.’
