The White House has revealed that major companies in the tech, defense and crypto industries are helping Donald Trump fund his $300m ballroom at the White House, where work is under way to demolish the entire East Wing.
The list of donors includes tech companies Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google; the defense contractors Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Palantir; and the communication companies T-Mobile and Comcast, according to CNN.
Billionaire Trump supporters who were major donors to his campaign last year are also featured on the list, including Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; the Blackstone CEO, Stephen Schwarzman; the oil tycoon Harold Hamm; and the cryptocurrency billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is also on the list.
Some donors last week were invited to a White House dinner celebrating their contribution to the ballroom project, including representatives from Google, Amazon and Lockheed Martin.
“Chief executives throughout history have contributed to making the White House special, and nothing of this magnitude has been done,” Trump told the donors at the start of the dinner, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday, Trump said the ballroom “is being paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine”. While the president initially said the 90,000 sq ft ballroom would cost $200m, he upped the figure to $300m yesterday.
Plans of any demolition had not been announced when backhoes started gutting the East Wing on Monday. Multiple reports have cited senior officials who said that the demolition will be completed “within days”.
In response to a question on the sudden demolition, Trump on Wednesday said the East Wing “was never thought of as being much”.
“It was a very small building,” he said, adding that “in order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure.”
In remarks made over the summer, however, when Trump first announced plans for his new ballroom, he said the project wouldn’t impact the existing structure. “It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it,” he said. “And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
In a letter to the White House on Thursday, House Democrats rebuked the demolition and the lack of transparency around the new ballroom.
“This project represents one of the most substantial alterations to the White House in modern history,” the letter said. “The decisions were made in complete secrecy and undertaken without public disclosure or proper consultation.”
The letter notes that the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings, is closed due to the federal government shutdown.
The White House said it still intends to submit construction plans to the commission and has argued that it did not need approval for demolition. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a major non-profit that advocates for preservation of historic buildings, told the White House that it is “legally required” to undergo the public review process with the commission.
