White House ballroom will serve ‘wealthy donors’

The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” called President Donald Trump’s brutal destruction of the East Wing of the White House last week, which was done to make way for his new presidential ballroom, a “fitting metaphor” for Trump’s entire presidency to date — and a move aimed at expanding his donor base.

“One week the president said, ‘We’re not going to touch the East Wing.’ The next week he destroys the half of the White House that houses such history,” host Joe Scarborough observed Monday, emphasizing how Trump’s actions ran counter to his previous comments about plans to build the ballroom. “No other president in our lifetime would have thought of doing this just on instinct, so abruptly.”

“Let’s be clear, the vast majority of events of this size, that could take place in a ballroom of this magnitude, would be for wealthy donors,” co-host Jonathan Lemire told “Morning Joe” viewers. “Who’s that would be? [for]: People are buying access to the President of the United States.

“Donald Trump doesn’t care because right now, in Republican-led Washington, he’s doing exactly what he wants to do, and they’re too cowardly to do anything about it,” Scarborough added, referring to the lack of resistance from Republican representatives in the House and Senate to Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House. Scarborough’s sentiments were echoed by “Morning Joe” guest and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

“This presidency is a wrecking ball. I think that’s one of the reasons why the destruction of the East Wing really upset people in a way that even Trump’s other, more outrageous actions didn’t,” Ignatius said. “We think of it as the People’s House. It was built deliberately to be inconspicuous. It’s not a palace like the Victorian rulers had it. It’s the People’s House. And Donald Trump has made it his personal property, or at least he behaves that way.”

You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself in the video below.

Ignatius added that he thinks people aren’t really upset with Trump’s plans to build a new ballroom for the White House, but rather with how he carried out his construction plans.

“There are many reasons why we need a ballroom,” Ignatius remarked, addressing his fellow “Morning Joe” panelists. “You’ve been to events at the White House that were held in tents, and you could make the argument that we need space, but not in this way. Not done in secret and unlike what has been described.”

“Trump seems to have learned nothing from this,” Ignatius concluded. “But I think a lot of other people watching this have learned a lot, and it’s going to continue to bother them.”