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TRUMP LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING!
Refute the Republican Rhetoric
By Bill Peifer
This week’s lies from Donald Trump are regarding the same topic as two weeks ago, namely his Big, Boastful, Bilious Ballroom. Here are his current claims about progress on his Ballroom, posted on Untruth Social on Saturday:
Tremendous work has been done on the magnificent BALLROOM/MILITARY COMPLEX being built on the grounds of the White House! Presidents have wanted this for 150 years, and so has everyone else. It will give the White House, and all of D.C., Great National Security. The Project is under budget, and ahead of schedule! The Ballroom will be paid for with ZERO Dollars of Taxpayer Money. Great American Patriots and Companies are footing the entire bill. President DONALD J. TRUMP
In case you hadn’t heard, a federal Appeals Court had ordered that work on Trump’s Ego Wing of the White House needed to be halted, but instead of following that order, Trump ordered work to continue unabated as he appealed to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John Roberts has now issued a temporary stay on the Appeals Court ruling, which allows for work to continue.
To be clear, when Trump first bulldozed the entire East Wing of the White House, without the required go-ahead from Congress, to make room for this monstrosity, it was simply a “ballroom”. The idea of justifying it as a military complex as well wasn’t introduced until a lawsuit was filed to stop it. Plans were quickly adjusted to justify replacing the hardened presidential bunker that once sat under the East Wing with a much larger command center where Trump could safely sit out any attempts to remove him. So, let’s get to the other lies.
Presidents have NOT wanted this for 150 years, nor has “everyone else”. In fact, there is no record of ANYBODY ever calling for even a small ballroom to be built, much less one that is roughly three times the size of the White House itself. Then there are the questions about whether it’s really “under budget, and ahead of schedule”. When Trump first began the project in July of last year, he put the price at $200 million and claimed it would be done “within three to six months”. Three months later, in October, the cost estimate had grown to $300 million, and the project was far from done. Two months after that it was said to be $400 million. Now it seems that the price tag is at least $600 million with the contractor involved now admitting that the total cost could go over $1 billion.
So, is the $1 billion “under budget" based on the July ‘25 $200 million budget, the October $300 million budget or the March $600 million budget? And is it “ahead of schedule” based on the initial estimate of three to six months? That should have had the whole project finished by the end of January, but it’s now estimated to be only 65% done, if that.
Our lie of two weeks ago was about Trump’s “pay-to-play” scheme of having government contractors picking up the tab. Now it appears that Trump’s original claims, reiterated in this post on Saturday, that this project wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, was a huge lie, since taxpayers will be on the hook for at least $300 million and perhaps as much as $700 million. If not more. All to massage Trump’s fragile ego, while our National Debt goes past the $40 trillion mark.
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