President Donald Trump has been boasting about his decision to add a ballroom to the White House, and demolition work is officially underway. Meanwhile, the project has sparked outrage, especially because Trump previously said the ballroom construction “won’t interfere with the current building.” On a recent episode of The View, the show’s co-hosts slammed the project. In addition to calling it “tacky” and comparing it to a “Florida country club,” they also pointed to how Trump has decided to spend $250 million on a White House ballroom when a large number of Americans are currently struggling financially.
Whoopi Goldberg referred to the ballroom as something “no one voted for [and] no one asked for.” She also went on to say that the White House does not belong to Trump. “That is not your building,” she said. “You don’t own that building! That would be like me going over to Trump Tower and saying, ‘I’m gonna build a disco!’ That is the people’s building. You don’t own it!”
While Trump has acted like the project will be a beautiful transformation and has suggested that it’s something that people have “wanted for probably 100 years at the White House,” Sunny Hostin expects it to look extremely “tacky.” She said, “People are losing their healthcare and tax breaks to billionaires who are probably some of the private donors for this tacky, gaudy, nasty ballroom. It’s tacky! See! It looks like Mar-a-Lago, which is tacky.”
Though Alyssa Farrah Griffin did defend Trump in some ways (by saying there’s currently no space in the White House for a large state dinner), she admitted the ballroom project might leave the White House looking more like “a Florida country club.”
To Joy Behar, the overall tackiness of the ballroom design is not the only reason the initiative isn’t looking too good. “He pared the Rose Garden down so it looks like a cemetery and, at the same time, people are losing their government jobs,” she said. “It’s a very bad look right now to be building and demolishing and all this gold, tacky crap that he loves.”
Sara Haines agreed with this take and also expanded on it, suggesting that it represents the huge gap between wealthy people and most Americans. While “people are struggling to eat,” Trump is obsessed with this lavish ballroom (let them eat cake?).
“A ballroom is a symbol of excess and opulence, and we’re living in a time where those optics just are flying in the face of the reality of the majority of this country,” she argued. “He won on making cost of living better, but inflation’s up three percent. 74 percent of Americans say they’ve seen household prices increase by at least $100. The unemployment rate is at a four-year high right now.”
And how is the ballroom going to help with any of that? “People are struggling to eat, and this is a wealthy ballroom paid for by wealthy people for wealthy people to come and dance,” she added.
