What is Trump’s ballroom obsession really about?
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In the past week, Donald Trump's obsession with his grand ballroom has reared its head again. He was even talking about it after a suspected third attempt on his life. The president has torn down the East Wing to make way for the huge room that critics say will dominate the White House. Today, Dan Diamond, White House reporter, The Washington Post, on legal efforts to stop the president and what Trump's motives really are. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Dan, it's been a huge week for Donald Trump. At the start of it, peace talks with Iran fell off the rails. He hosted King Charles and Queen Camilla. And, well, he survived what's considered as a third assassination attempt. There's a lot going on.
And through it all, he's very focused on building his White House ballroom. Yes. He keeps coming back to that.
Yes, it is striking when he brings this up, isn't it? Even after this press dinner incident, this shooting incident, Trump was on his feet talking about it again, wasn't he?
He was. He was talking about it in the press briefing room.
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. That's why Secret Service.
And I was covering President Trump's press conference with the Artemis astronauts who had just returned from space. And the president was asked what his schedule had been. And he said, well, I was with the contractors today working on the ballroom.
I've been with the astronauts. I've been with contractors because we're trying to get the ballroom built ahead of schedule. It's right on schedule. It's ahead of schedule now. I want to keep it that way.
I mean, this is something that we joke about it sometimes, but one of those jokes that might be true, that this might be the issue that is closest to his heart, trying to build this White House addition before he leaves office.
Yeah, he certainly seems fixated on it. He was also interviewed on Fox News after that dinner shooting and he was going on about it again.
It's a large hotel right on top and so people come down in elevators and they're right over the top of where you're speaking. And, you know, as you know, we're building a big, beautiful, very, very secure ballroom in every way with massive bulletproof glass that's almost four inches thick. It's pretty amazing stuff.
Well, according, Dan, to a report you co-authored in The Washington Post a few weeks ago, Donald Trump has publicly highlighted the ballroom project about a third of the days of this year. Just tell me about that because that seems rather extraordinary.
And that was before he highlighted it every day, it feels like, this week. So my colleague at The Post and I, Ens Morse, we went back and we just tracked his remarks, his true social posts, and we expected a lot of mentions of the White House ballroom. I don't think we expected it to surpass other policy priorities that the president has has allegedly highlighted as big goals for this year. We have a midterm election coming up here in the States.
What is Donald Trump's obsession with the grand ballroom about?
Control of Congress is in the balance. Republicans are trying to campaign on issues like drug prices and affordability. And when you look at some of the things that Trump mentions less than the ballroom, there are things like this new TrumpRx website, his new drug pricing website that his advisors really, really want him to focus on.
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