Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) rejected former Rep. Joe Walsh’s idea that the next Democrat in office should destroy President Donald Trump’s new ballroom.
“I will repeat this every single day for the next three years: Any Democrat running for president in 2028 must pledge to immediately tear down/bulldoze/demolish Trump’s ballroom and fully restore the East Wing and any other piece of the People’s House Trump has or will destroy,” Walsh said in a post on X on Friday.
On “Meet The Press” on Sunday, NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Gallego if he agreed with that notion.
“No, I think, to really mess with him, just name it the Barack Obama ballroom, and I think that will take care of half the problem,” Gallego, a staunch critic of the president, quipped in response. “More importantly, this is a distraction. First of all, he should not have done that. It’s the people’s house. No. 2, where is the president? He’s focusing on the ballroom.”
Gallego brought up Trump’s tariffs, then described how everyday Americans are struggling to make ends meet amid current inflation.
“So what I would like him to do is to focus on this: to make sure that we can actually get costs down, people can actually make a good standard of living right now and be able to pay what they need to survive, instead of him focusing all these little projects which aren’t really bringing anything to help everyday Americans,” he added.
Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom is set to cost $300 million, up from an earlier estimate of $200 million.
The White House has said that the ballroom will not cost taxpayers. Instead, it’s being funded by Trump and other wealthy donors — including, in part, Amazon, Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir Technologies Inc. — sparking ethics concerns.
ABC News reported that senior Trump administration officials are already referring to the new white house addition as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom,” a name that would likely stick.
However, Trump denied it and said he hasn’t thought about the name of his new ballroom despite the entire East Wing having already been demolished.
“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
Trump has been criticized for starting construction of the ballroom without prior approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction projects in Washington.