Democrats could block some Trump building plans they argue Congress has not authorized
President Donald Trump’s first public appearance since Tuesday’s midterm elections was a stop at the construction site of the new White House ballroom rather than an event addressing the Republican defeat, according to a Guardian column by Arwa Mahdawi. As a building crew prepared to install the ballroom’s final beam, Trump praised the structure to the press corps without offering his party a path forward after what the column called the Republicans’ historic midterm beating, with Democrats now controlling the House and Senate. In Mahdawi’s telling, Trump skipped “all the way past shock, denial and anger” and landed at the “admiring my beautiful renovations” stage of grief.
“This has been a structure the likes of which has never been seen anywhere,” Trump told reporters. He then spent more than 20 minutes discussing the ballroom’s “magnificent columns,” marble floors, cocktail rooms and Corinthian design, and explained in detail why the ballroom’s kitchens will be located underground. “If I put the kitchen on top, you would lose three walls, because a kitchen takes about 30% of the space,” Trump said. “I love construction,” he added, before signing a beam with a black Sharpie.
The elections came up only because reporters insisted on asking. “If I were on the ballot, I would have won,” Trump said. The column noted that Trump had earlier told voters, “Just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot,” and that, according to a Washington Post analysis, he repeated variations of that statement 63 times.
Trump’s response this week differed from his reaction to the 2018 midterms, when Republicans lost the House of Representatives — though the column noted they may not have been rebuked quite as badly then as they were this year. Trump called those results a “tremendous success” and insulted his opponents, reacting with what Mahdawi described as his characteristic conspiracy and anger. “Mia Love gave me no love, but then she lost,” Trump said at the time, referring to the Utah Republican who lost her House re-election bid. “Too bad.”
Mahdawi argued that Trump’s response, though it may seem bizarre, is in keeping with the priorities of his second term. Despite his earlier threats about running for president again, the president appears to have accepted that this will be his last stint in the White House, she wrote, and is focused on leaving a legacy: putting his name on as many things as possible, renovating whatever he can and building monuments she described as self-aggrandizing.
The column described a broader Republican aftermath. Elon Musk is joking about his “election-interfering space lasers” and pretending he does not care that he spent nearly half a billion dollars trying to influence the midterms, according to the column. JD Vance, meanwhile, has written long essays on social media agreeing that the Iran war was “a bit of an oopsie.”
At a recent rally in Ohio, Barack Obama joked about Trump’s renovation focus. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory, just gold everywhere,” Obama said. “He seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV.”
Trump did not find the jokes particularly amusing. “I paid for it myself. I fixed it, and now it’s more beautiful and in better shape,” he said in defense of his White House upgrades. Obama, he suggested, just didn’t get it because he “doesn’t understand that having asphalt going to your main entrance is not the right thing.”
Trump’s construction projects may soon face more than jokes, the column reported. Democrats are already scrutinizing the ballroom’s funding, and now that they control the House and Senate, they could move to block some of Trump’s building plans on the argument that the plans have not been authorized by Congress and are therefore illegal, Mahdawi wrote. Democrats could also clamp down on renovation excesses: despite his pledges about bringing jobs back to America, Trump has outsourced the carving of the ballroom’s Corinthian columns to Italy.
Even if Democrats manage to rein Trump in, the column concluded, he has already made an indelible mark on Washington. Work on his 250-foot “triumphal arch” could begin this week if a judge gives approval, according to the column. And the president has just wrapped up a $14 million project to clean up the “filthy” Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, ridding it of the algae blooms that had turned the water green.
On Monday, the eve of election day and after what the column called a long and difficult battle against the algae, Trump used his final pre-election press conference — the last before polls opened — not to make a closing appeal to voters but to declare “mission accomplished” on the pool cleanup and praise how the pool looked. Standing in front of a sign that read “Back, and more beautiful than ever!”, Trump said the project should unite all Americans. As voters angry about the price of groceries and gas prepared to cast their ballots, Trump held up pictures of rusted pipes and explained the virtues of painting the pool “American flag blue.”
Mahdawi allowed the president some credit for the outcome: the water does look a bit clearer now, she wrote — and the pool is “certainly doing more reflecting than the president is.”