James Stout

But at the end of the judiciary bill, it allocates $1 billion of taxpayer dollars for security enhancements to the new White House ballroom.

This money would go to Secret Service, quote, for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound, including above ground and below ground security features, unquote.

Trump has touted the ballroom as being entirely funded by private donors, originally costing $200 million, but ballooning to $400 million this year, which means that these security funds are greater than the total previously estimated cost of construction.

$1 billion versus $400 million.

Now, these security funds do have a stated limitation.

Quote, none of the funds made available under this section may be used for non-security elements of the East Wing Modernization Project, which is what they call the ballroom.

But what qualifies as security or non-security elements is not clear.

Like, is bulletproof glass or reinforced walls a security element?

Yeah.

Does paying contractors to make adjustments or enhancements to the building count as security elements?

We don't know because this is a lot of money.

And this, again, comes after the Trump administration's deployment of the attempted assassination at the White House dinner to further the development of the ballroom.

And now this bill includes extra funding for it in the wake of that.

And it's unclear how exactly that money would be used if passed.

Hey, Garrison, my dear friend, you are thinking way too small in terms of what... The president just tried to use the Defense Production Act to buy an airline so he could, like, run it, right?

Like, they're going to be like, yeah, I had to, like, put this gold lace on, like, this column is actually bullet deflecting.

It's going to be, like, that kind of shit.

Like...

That's just like the way this entire administration has operated.

A lot of the construction could have security elements.