President Donald Trump with Sen. John Thune and First Lady Melania Trump on January 8, 2025 (Office of Senator John Thune/Wikimedia Commons)
President Donald Trump wants to use the assassination attempt against him to incentivize the building a White House ballroom — but at least one possible route for achieving this may be closed off to him.
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune was noncommittal Monday over whether Congress could greenlight construction of the White House ballroom as part of the GOP’s party-line immigration enforcement bill,” Politico reported on Monday, quoting him as saying “I don’t know. We’ll see what’s achievable.”
In the aftermath of the attempt on Trump’s life at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, a number of conservatives argued that the event proved Trump needs to build a ballroom to host events. (The White House Correspondents Dinner, as a private event, has never been held at the White House.) Conservative activists Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Libs of TikTok and Wall Street Mav claimed that the shooting proves a ballroom is needed, as did a number of Republican lawmakers. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) posted after the shooting, “I'm dropping a bill tomorrow. Let's build the Ballroom.”
Yet Thune’s comments indicate, according to Politico, that if Trump does get his ballroom, it may not be through an immigration funding bill.
“Three congressional aides, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said provisions related to funding the White House ballroom would not fit within the limits of the GOP’s current filibuster-skirting reconciliation plan,” Politico reported. “Republicans hope to provide roughly $70 billion to immigration enforcement agencies that are still shut down amid the larger Department of Homeland Security funding lapse.”
The reported added, “Thune, explaining why he was unsure ballroom language could be added in, noted that only two committees were tapped to write the bill — the Judiciary and Homeland Security panels, which don’t have jurisdiction over the ballroom plans.”
Trump has been fixated on a White House ballroom for months, prioritizing its construction over a number of policy proposals that would directly impact the American people.
“Trump has invoked the ballroom on about a third of the days this year, according to a Washington Post analysis of his public remarks and social media posts, a pace that rivals and even exceeds his mentions of some major policy priorities,” wrote The Washington Post’s Clara Ence Morse and Dan Diamond. “He has mentioned the project on fewer days this year than topics such as tariffs and Iran but on about as many days as he has mentioned health insurance and ‘affordability.’”
They pointed out Trump has promoted his ballroom “significantly” more than his TrumpRx website, “which his administration introduced to help Americans shop for cheaper prescription drugs.” That was not all.
“In April, for instance, the president has issued more posts about the ballroom on his Truth Social platform than about tariffs — Trump’s signature economic policy,” Morse and Diamond wrote. “On Thursday, the president took to Truth Social to complain about the federal judge who ordered a stop to the project until Trump receives congressional authorization, complain again about the judge, complain about the plaintiff, and then complain about the judge one more time — yielding nearly 800 words of invective, all told. Then, within minutes, Trump shared all four posts again.”