Broadcastin’ live from Gilead, babies - where today we’re transmittin’ from the ruins of what used to be the East Wing of the White House, now a hole in the ground the size of a man’s ego and twice as expensive.
Pull up a chair, my loves. Get yourself a cup of something strong because Auntie’s got the whole story and it is a doozy wrapped in gold foil and tied with a ribbon made of our money.
Let me tell you what happened to your house.
Not your apartment. Not your neighborhood. Your house. The one that belongs to every single American citizen, has done so for over two hundred years, and survived wars, recessions, four presidential assassinations, and a direct attack on January 6th. That house.
Hair Führer decided it needed a ballroom.
Now, Auntie is not without imagination. I understand the concept of wanting to upgrade your digs. I once put new curtains up in the kitchen and thought I was something special for a full week. But what happened to the People’s House is not a curtain situation. In October of 2025, demolition crews took backhoes to the East Wing… the East Wing that Franklin Roosevelt built in 1942… and knocked it flat in four days. Four days, babies. It took four days to demolish a piece of American history because the man currently renting the place decided it was, and I quote, “a very small building.” “It was never thought of as being much.”
He said that. About the East Wing of the White House. Built during World War II. I need you to sit with that.
He wanted more room. Specifically, he wanted a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. That’s roughly the size of two football fields. Apparently, the current White House, which has hosted every head of state on earth for going on two and a half centuries, cannot seat enough people at dinner to satisfy the man’s need for an audience. The capacity would go from 200 guests to 999. Nine hundred and ninety-nine people. Because when you’ve been told your whole life that you’re the main event, 200 admirers starts to feel like a slow Tuesday.
But here’s the part where Auntie had to set down her tea and take a stomp around the kitchen.
The ballroom, we were told, would be privately funded. Donors! Generous, patriotic, totally-not-expecting-anything-in-return donors! Not a penny of taxpayer money, the White House promised. Not one red cent. The OMB put it in writing during the government shutdown last October… the construction would continue because it was privately funded and would not be impacted by federal budget negotiations. The American people were assured: this one’s on the donors, honey. Don’t you worry.
Now. Let Auntie ask you something.
When a billionaire donor writes a check for the president’s personal ballroom - not for the public good, not for a school or a hospital or a road - but for a ballroom where the president will throw parties and hold state dinners and generally act like the Sultan of Mar-a-Lardo - what exactly do you suppose that donor gets in return? Hmm? What’s the going rate for access to the President of the United States? What policy favor fits neatly in the pocket of a man who just wrote a check for a gold-plated party room in exchange for nothing whatsoever? Just love of country, presumably. Just a generous heart. Like they’re known for.
We were also told the whole project would cost around $200 million. Then it became $300 million. Then $400 million. The White House budget for this fiscal year now includes $377 million for White House “renovations and repairs,” plus another $174 million for fiscal year 2027. That is — and I want to be precise here because Auntie respects a number — an 866 percent increase from the $39 million spent on White House repairs in 2025. I did not mistype that. Eight hundred and sixty-six percent. Most of it, we are told, comes from donors. But some of it does not. And, in keeping with the cult’s irony deficiency, Private Payback tried to have Jerome Powell charged with crimes for a building going over budget. The full accounting of what goes where has been, shall we say, creative.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued. A federal judge said the demolition of the East Wing to call it an “alteration” would require, and I am quoting directly here, “some brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary.” He later ordered construction halted. The Trump administration responded by claiming national security implications; because apparently, the issue of where to seat dinner guests is now a classified military matter. Coincidentally, there was a big party at a hotel that happens every year and Trump has skipped it for every year of his presidency… until this one. Wouldn’t you know it… a man with a gun ran past security. And just like that, the Retrumplicans activated their bobble heads and said to anyone that would listen “We need the ballroom.” Not for nothing, the Correspondents’ Dinner would never be held at the White House or in the Trumpstein Ballroom.
And the part about a classified military matter turned out to be partially true, in the most on-brand way possible. While Trump was selling the public on a ballroom, he was simultaneously telling reporters that the real project is a massive military complex being built underneath it, replacing the old Presidential Emergency Operations Center that dated back to World War II. “The ballroom,” he explained from Air Force One, “essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under the military.”
The ballroom’s a shed, January 6 was a “tour group”, the war in Iran is an “excursion,” and a missile strike is a “love tap.” Misuse of the English language is nothing new for Captain Covfefe.
The cost to taxpayers for the underground military complex? Not disclosed. Top secret, according to the White House director of management. But the military is very much involved, Trump confirmed. So what we have, my beloved rabble rousers, is a secret military bunker with a gold ballroom on top, funded by a combination of undisclosed donors who definitely want nothing in return, and taxpayer dollars the amount of which we are not permitted to know.
This is what’s happening to your house.
Meanwhile… and Auntie needs you to stay with her here because we’re just warming up… the debris from demolishing the East Wing had to go somewhere. Where did it go? A public golf course. West Potomac. The one where regular people play for $42 for 18 holes, not the $1 million membership Trump charges at Mar-a-Lardo. The rubble, which the National Park Service confirmed contains toxic metals, was dumped at the public course. The people’s golf course. Because of course it was.
And then… and I want to stress that everything I am about to tell you is real and documented and happening in the country you live in… he had the Reflecting Pool painted.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The 2,000-foot pool where Martin Luther King stood in 1963 and told this country what it could be. That pool. Trump decided it was filthy. Why? Because a “friend” from Germany said so. And so Trump called up some guys he knew from his pool-building days, because a wannabe king has pool guys, and he had it coated. In a color he calls “American flag blue.” Which he selected personally after being talked out of his first choice, which was turquoise. “Like the Bahamas,” he said. He wanted the sacred reflection pool at the Lincoln Memorial to look like a resort pool in Nassau.
Then - I’m not done, my loves, put the cup down - he drove his motorcade across the freshly coated Reflecting Pool to inspect it. He drove on it. Like a man checking the new driveway. Major projects on the National Mall are supposed to undergo federal reviews and require public input and congressional authorization. None of that happened. He just did it because he felt like it and no one stopped him.
He also wants an arch. A triumphal arch across from the Lincoln Memorial, 250 feet tall - twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial itself - topped with a gilded winged figure, four golden lions at the base, golden eagles on the sides, and the phrases “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All” inscribed in gold. He said he wants it built by July 4th. When asked who the arch is for, he said, and I am quoting: “Me. Going to be beautiful.”
For himself. He wants a triumphal arch, built on public land, with public money - there is now $15 million in taxpayer dollars reserved for it through the NEH, dedicated to himself. The man who oversees a billion dollar a day war, who just gutted Medicaid, who has said there’s no money for daycare or healthcare, and tells us we should be happy paying $4.50+/gallon for gas wants a monument to himself taller than the Lincoln Memorial standing in the city where Abraham Lincoln is buried.
And lest you think this is purely a Washington problem, a word to our friends in Palm Beach. Florida taxpayers are on the hook for $5 million to rename Palm Beach International Airport the “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Five million dollars. And here’s the extra little cherry on top of this particular sundae: a trademark deal means that a company run by Donald Trump Jr. gets to review and approve any airport-branded merchandise. So not only did Florida taxpayers pay to rename a public airport after a sitting president, but the sitting president’s family now has approval authority over the airport gift shop. I promise you I am not making this up. I have sources at the bottom.
No money for daycare. No money for healthcare. But: a ballroom, a bunker, a painted pool, an arch for himself, and a trademarked airport — all while an undisclosed number of very grateful donors with no particular agenda are generously chipping in, and the rest comes from you… while you try to pay all of your bills, rent or mortgage, groceries, gas…
Babies, they are not renovating the People’s House. They are annexing it. There is a difference between a president who improves the institution they serve and a man who mistakes the office for a personal trophy room and the Treasury for his renovation budget. One of those things is stewardship. The other is what’s happening right now.
Auntie is going to need you to stay furious about this, but not hopeless. Furious is useful. Furious writes letters and shows up and votes and tells the next person what’s actually going on, because the news cycle moves so fast that last week’s demolished historic wing becomes background noise before the paint is dry on the Pool That Was Nearly Turquoise.
This is your house. These are your monuments. That is your money. And the man currently living there and redecorating at your expense is not a president who loves his country. He is a man who loves his reflection — which is probably why he had to do something about the pool.
I love you to pieces, my darlings. Keep your receipts and your rage.
Tits up, elbows out. Auntie’s got the shillelagh and she has opinions about interior design.
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