CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Humpty Trumpty Sat on a Ball(room)

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Having seen Trump shuffle spasmodically to the Village People’s Y.M.C.A., I think we can rule out dancing as the motivation to construct a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood.

We can also rule out the most recent reason given for the construction of such a Reichskanzlei, which is that only in a Führerbunker funded by tech bros and Epstein patrons will this president ever feel safe.

This leads us back to the original intent of the Trump administration with all its tariffs, foreign wars, Musk budget cuts, and endless boondoggles (like the “free” Qatari airplane): graft and corruption to the sole benefit of Thirty Percenter (normally his take on the vig) Donald J. Trump, proprietor.

Trump never ran for the office of the president to participate in the great democratic experiment of a free people. In 2016, the insolvent Trump descended on his escalator from heaven to escape his creditors.

In 2024, he ran again, this time to dodge looming jail sentences and to convert the presidency into a private equity concern for his own benefit and that of his weird, grifting extended family (Cf. Melania’s $40 million shakedown of Amazon in exchange for some home movies or Eric’s $24 million drone contract from Daddy’s Pentagon).

Turning the White House into a gaudy timeshare casino resort and hotel ballroom is just part of the same IPO plan for the executive branch of government.

If you’re a real estate developer, one of the few pleasures of the job is to use building sites (the bigger the better) to pad expenses and shake down outside contractors for a slice of the action.

The ballroom project began with the midnight destruction of the White House’s East Wing. (If any average American citizen tore down an historic capital building, presumably he or she would be arrested and sent to jail, unless it happened on “a beautiful day”, such as January 6.)

Neither Congress nor any oversight body approved this demolition, but Trump went ahead with his take-down as his family has done countless times in New York........

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