President Donald Trump's ridiculous, corrupt, and possibly illegal $400 million ballroom project got approval from one of two necessary committees on Thursday, when an advisory panel Trump stacked with a bunch of unqualified yesmen concluded their so-called review process and gave a final okay for the plans.
Trump appointed all seven of the members of the Commission of Fine Arts, which approved the project on Thursday. The members were chosen because they would uncritically approve whatever Trump wanted.
And they all heaped praise on the grotesque structure that is expected to dwarf the size of the primary White House building.
“The president has actually designed a very beautiful structure,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., chair of the CFA, said at the approval meeting, according to Politico. Cook continued, saying that “the United States just should not be entertaining the world in tents. It is really outrageous that we do that, and no president has really stepped up to the plate to require that be corrected, until President Trump.”
According to Politico, the CFA did not debate the ballroom at all, and its members all spoke glowingly of the project and of Trump himself.
“This is ... the greatest country in the world, the greatest house in the world,” Chamberlain Harris, an unqualified 26-year-old kiss-ass who was just appointed to the role, said at the meeting, adding that the building that will dwarf the White House is fine because it "isn’t that big by ballroom standards."
Naturally, Trump is chuffed that his pet project—which he has taken more interest in than helping Americans afford the cost of living—is now approved.
Cranes work the site where the White House's East Wing once stood.
"The Commission of Fine Arts just approved, unanimously, 6 to 0, with one recusal because he had a conflict in that he worked professionally on the job, the White House Ballroom. Great accolades were paid to the building’s beauty and scale. Thank you to the members of the Commission!" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.
He was clearly still thinking about it later Thursday, when he fired off another Truth Social post with a photo rendering of the hideously ostentatious structure, along with the text: "Received the Commission of Fine Arts approval today for what will soon be the Greatest Ballroom ever built!"
The CFA's quick and uncritical approval was slammed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which says that Trump's design will "overwhelm the carefully balanced classical design of the White House, a symbol of our democratic republic."
"We were puzzled this morning when the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) approved the concept plans for the proposed White House ballroom, and then, in a second vote—without any advance public notice—also approved the final plans, which had neither been presented nor reviewed," National Trust President and CEO Carol Quillen, who is suing to stop the project, said in a news release. "In doing so, CFA bypassed its obligation to provide serious design review and consider the views of the American people, including the over 99% of public comments (out of 2,000 submissions) that expressed opposition to the current design and offered valuable suggestions on how it might be improved."
The project must now get approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, according to The Washington Post, which said that that panel will meet in March. Trump hopes then to start construction in April.
However, it remains to be seen whether the National Trust's lawsuit will succeed in halting the project. A federal judge heard arguments in the suit in January and has yet to issue a ruling.
But polls show that no matter what happens, Americans do not support the project.
A YouGov poll from October—when Trump decided to raze the entire East Wing of the White House before the ballroom project had even been approved—found that just 28% of Americans supported the demolition. A Washington Post/ABC News poll from the same month found an identical result, with just 28% supporting the project.
It’s no wonder Trump’s approval rating recently hit a second-term low.
Americans want a better economy, not a gilded ballroom.
