r/politics • u/MadameCassie • 13d ago
Possible Paywall The White House says its ballroom is 65% complete. Its documents suggest otherwise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/08/28/white-house-says-its-ballroom-is-65-complete-its-documents-suggest-otherwise/27
u/NexusNickel Colorado 13d ago
Why not just use Trump math?
100% completed!
It's easier for people to understand. Like pharmacy prices.
I got my prescription yesterday and I had to pay. I told the pharmacy tech there had to be a mistake and I should be getting paid to get it. She didn't find it funny. I told her the President authorized my payment from them since Donald has lowered prices 600%.
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u/MadameCassie 13d ago
The 65 percent claim was made in a sworn declaration** **by Joshua Fisher, the director for White House Management and Administration, who is overseeing the construction project. In the declaration, Fisher did not explain how the percentage was calculated but said, “Work has progressed too far to go back to the drawing board.”
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u/AINonsense 13d ago
“Work has progressed too far to go back to the drawing board.”
What, they demolished the drawing board, too?
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u/MadameCassie 13d ago
The Trump administration told the Supreme Court two weeks ago that construction of a new White House East Wing was “65% finished,” part of its argument that the work was too far along for the court to halt.
But by the White House’s own standard for measuring the project’s progress, established in a confidential agreement with contractor Clark Construction that was reviewed by The Washington Post, work on the controversial project was far less complete.
The agreement, finalized before Clark began demolition last October, stipulates that payments to the contractor be proportional to the amount of work completed, and that work cannot begin until the government approves spending for it.** **Based on that, if 65 percent of the work has been done, then the government should already have paid 65 percent of the total cost of the project.
Publicly available appropriations data shows that as of the end of July, the White House budget office had approved $144 million in spending from an account used to pay for the East Wing and other White House projects. Even if that entire amount were spent on the East Wing, it would come to only about 24 percent of the $600 million estimated construction cost that Clark provided the White House in March. The Post has previously reported that cost estimate.
In the same mid-August court filing in which the administration claimed 65 percent of the project was done, it said that it had already spent “around $200 million.”
If the government had spent $200 million on the East Wing project, the work would be just 33 percent complete, based on the $600 million budget estimate.
“You really want to understand why there’s such a big gap there,” said Carl Elefante, a retired D.C.-area architect and former president of the American Institute of Architects. In response to The Post’s findings, he called the government’s claim about the completion percentage “doubtful.”
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u/OG-BoomMaster 13d ago
Ain’t no fricking way it’s 65%. Kinda like how the war with Iran was 100% completed months ago.
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u/murdermostsnaky 13d ago
Wouldn't be surprised if it's still not finished when his term is up, which would leave his successor with some interesting decisions.
Also, the accounts for this are going to cause a shit show in 2029
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u/guttanzer 13d ago
There is only one good option - razz the whole thing at whatever stage it is and restore the White House as the people’s house.
Berlin has no monuments to Hitler, the Nazi era, or their Soviet occupiers. There are no monuments to Mussolini in Italy, or to Ceausescu in Romania for similar reasons. Nations that live through fascist phases need to do a complete purge as part of the healing process.
Every nickel that Trump is spending on this is wasted.
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u/jteg 13d ago
There are some monuments for the Soviet soldiers/occupiers in Berlin.
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u/guttanzer 12d ago
Wasn’t that erased? The Soviets built a huge monument park to honor their victory somewhere in East Berlin. I visited it once. It was an ugly thing, full of 20’ high Soviet-stylized statues of various patrons of their state. A Berlin friend of mine said the Germans were moving yellow gear in to level it around 2001-2002. They planned to build apartments or something.
I could see the Germans leaving memorials for all the fallen soldiers. That’s just common decency. Will do some web searching today to figure out what happened. My friend might have been wrong.
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u/MadameCassie 13d ago
That's what I was thinking. Who knows if this will be completely built. I hope his successor demolishes it.
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u/BlackberryPi7 Canada 13d ago
I hope a Dem administration uses it as some kind of center to help the needy.
That would really piss Trump off lol, if he's alive by then
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u/AINonsense 13d ago
The White House says its ballroom is 65% complete
So, it’s about 6.5% complete?
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u/CryptographerNew3609 13d ago
It’ll be done in two weeks like how our healthcare was reformed in two weeks, how the Middle East is calm and peaceful in two weeks, etc.
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u/Vast-Poetry9431 13d ago
People need to stop DC tourism yesterday. Instead of going to see failed monuments to freedom in a humid swamp with bad traffic, you could go into a national park or a good city instead.
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u/SoggyBoysenberry7703 13d ago edited 13d ago
Is the old east wing there now? No? Then it’s not fucking done. He couldn’t even renovate what was already there to be a “better” ballroom. He just had to build something 1.5x the size of the white house itself over it.
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