WASHINGTON ― The day after his party lost control of Congress in a historic landslide, President Donald Trump took significant time to celebrate the ongoing construction of his ballroom at the White House.
“It’s been the dream of presidents to have a ballroom for 150 years,” Trump said Wednesday before adding his signature to the structure’s final beam.
It was a bizarre spectacle.
Republicans just lost both the House and Senate on Tuesday in a rebuke of the president, especially his failure to fulfill a 2024 campaign promise to end inflation and cut gas prices in half, and Trump used his first public appearance to talk about the marble he’d picked out for his ballroom floor.
“The owner of the quarry didn’t want to sell it, but he liked me, and he also was so honored to be doing it for the country, for the White House,” Trump told reporters. “And the marble floor, you’ll see it is the most beautiful marble you’ll ever see.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called Wednesday a “day of celebration” and praised Trump as the “greatest builder that has ever been president.” After the president added his signature to the final beam, which had already been signed by dozens of workers, a crane hoisted the piece of metal to the ballroom’s skeletal roof.
The building is one of several vanity projects Trump has pursued in Washington, D.C., that GOP lawmakers considered a distraction from their political agenda. Senate Republicans refused a request to appropriate $1 billion for the ballroom. The construction plainly violated federal law requiring congressional approval, but the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit over the plaintiff’s supposed lack of “standing” to bring the case.
Past presidents have acknowledged midterm defeats and pledged to try to regain the trust of the American people. George W. Bush admitted in 2006 that Republicans took a “thumpin’” at the polls. Barack Obama said Democrats suffered a “shellacking” in 2010. President Donald Trump in 2026 said, “Watch the beam go up.”
The president did acknowledge people had questioned the time he spends on his side project.
“First of all, it’s very little time. Second of all, I like it. It’s good ― for me, it’s relaxing,” Trump said. “I love construction.”
Trump did not acknowledge Republicans’ electoral losses until a reporter asked. He said the Iran war had been worth the spike in gas prices that soured voters on his party and accepted no responsibility for his party’s shellacking.
“If I were on the ballot, we would have won,” he said.