Even before Donald Trump addressed the press in the aftermath of a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, large swaths of the online right had decided on a course for messaging: The shooting proves why the president’s potentially unlawful White House ballroom project must be completed.
It’s a nonsensical line of reasoning. For starters, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is not an event organized or hosted by the White House — the president attends as an invited guest. On top of that, the planned ballroom would only fit about half the guests of the dinner, which can boast upwards of 2,000 guests. Even amid reports that Secret Service security was more relaxed than in previous years, the agency’s protocols worked to neutralize the gunman. It should also go without saying that the president regularly leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to attend public events, and remaining cloistered in the complex at all times is not an option.
Yet, dozens of high profile conservative commentators responded to the shooting by demanding the ballroom be embraced.
Those figures included Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Arizona senator and presidential nominee John McCain; Jack Posobiec, a prominent ethnonationalist conspiracy theorist turned White House stenographer; LIbs of TikTok, the anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ hate account run by Chaya Raichik; and a slew of other accounts boasting collective millions of followers posted basically the same message.
A few hours after the shooting, Trump appeared in the White House press briefing room and all but made the talking point official. “I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s much more secure. It’s drone proof. It’s bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom,” Trump said. “That’s why Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it. They’ve wanted the ballroom for 150 years for lots of different reasons.”
In a subsequent Truth Social post, the president wrote that “this event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough,” and called for an ongoing lawsuit to block the construction of the structure to be dismissed.
And that really cuts at the crux of the matter. Trump’s ballroom — and much of the self-aggrandizing renovations and projects he’s been forcing onto Washington, D.C. — are noncompliant with federal laws and regulations governing construction on public buildings.
Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House after initially claiming it would not be harmed by his ballroom project. The demolition took place without the approval or review of the National Capital Planning Commission, the congressionally authorized executive agency which oversees federal construction. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the administration twice in response.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon put a temporary stop on construction, writing that the president could resume his plans as soon as Congress “blesses this project through statutory authorization.”
“The President may at any time go to Congress to obtain express authority to construct a ballroom and to do so with private funds,” Leon wrote, as the legislative branch retained “authority over the nation’s property and its oversight of government spending.” A D.C. appeals court allowed construction to resume while the administration challenges the ruling, but in the aftermath of the shooting, Trump’s Department of Justice is outright attempting to bully the National Trust for Historic Preservation into dropping their lawsuit — accusing them of placing the president’s very life in danger by challenging him.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blache wrote in a Sunday letter to the attorneys representing the trust that “the White House ballroom is essential for the safety and security of the President, his family, his cabinet, and his staff. When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom.”
“Put simply, your lawsuit puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk,” Blanche added. “I hope yesterday’s narrow miss will help you finally realize the folly of a lawsuit that literally serves no purpose except to stop President Trump no matter the cost.”
They’re seemingly enlisting the help of lawmakers and influencers to get it done. Several social media users and outlets noted the swarm of right-wing influencers who posted demands for the ballroom’s completion within minutes of each other — and using nearly identical language. Accusations of a coordinated messaging campaign between the users and the White House circulated online.
Prominent lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also joined the chorus. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Monday that the ballroom will be “a solution” to whatever problem the president imagines he is solving. “It’ll have seven-inch thick glass, so it’ll be a very safe environment to do events like that. We need a place like that and the president keeps pointing it out.” The House Speaker seems uninterested in actually exerting the approval power of Congress, as doing so would mean recognizing that the president has been operating illegally on this and a half dozen other projects for months.
There are a myriad of reasons why the claims being made about the ballroom’s necessity are exaggerated, but in the context of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the First Amendment implications cannot be discounted. The dinner takes place outside of the White House because, at least in its conception, it is supposed to highlight the independence of the press. They decide the venue, the guest list, the speakers, and the president attends and (ideally) subjects himself to some good-humored roasting. Placing the dinner — and other events like it — within the confines of the White House would inherently give the president and his staff far more control over who can attend, what they can say, and whether or not it takes place at all.
For an administration already obsessed with controlling how the press covers them, and punishing those whose coverage they do not like, it’s a dream come true.
