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OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
5:07 PM – Sunday, October 26, 2025
United States Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) is demanding potential Democrat presidential candidates for 2028 to pledge to tear down President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom.
On Sunday, the Democrat congressman posted on X: “Don’t even think of seeking the Democratic nomination for president unless you pledge to take a wrecking ball to the Trump Ballroom on DAY ONE.”
He added in a comment that he would find it acceptable if the next Democrat president were to “rename it the Barack Obama Ballroom,” though the White House has not suggested any name for the space.
“But a Trump monument to corruption will not stand,” he finished.
Swalwell is only the latest Democrat to come out against the new addition to the White House, despite the project being fully funded by the president and private donors, putting no cost on American taxpayers.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt condemned the “fake outrage” over the project, saying that “nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own.”
Indeed, former President Barack Obama added a basketball court while in office.
During the Obama administration, many state dinners were held on the South Lawn under a tent, requiring guests to use portable restrooms. The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will have the capacity for approximately 650 seated guests, allowing dinners and receptions to be held indoors.
Trump even mentioned possibly holding the inauguration in the ballroom. This may provide some extra security to high-profile individuals, compared to open-air venues like the one in Pennsylvania where Trump was shot in the ear last summer.
Most of the White House remains untouched by the new construction, including the West Wing, the Executive Residence, and both the east and west colonnades. The East Wing, which has held the First Lady’s office and other staff office spaces along with a nuclear bunker, will be expanded to fit the grand ballroom.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also complained about the building project, bringing scrutiny on her own treatment of the White House when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, left office. The couple took furniture and other “gifts” from the People’s House, and ended up returning $28,000 worth of furnishings. The Clintons also reimbursed the White House an additional $86,000 for items taken.
Their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who lived in the White House from ages 12 to 20, wrote on X, “The erasure of the East Wing isn’t just about marble or plaster — it’s about President Trump again taking a wrecking ball to our heritage, while targeting our democracy, and the rule-of-law.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom also repeatedly criticized the project, which drew attention to his own state’s ongoing renovations of the Capitol building in Sacramento. The project began shortly before he entered office with an estimated cost of less than $550 million, but has grown to more than $1 billion under his governance, and is fully funded by taxpayers.
Conservatives have jokingly diagnosed those who take offense to the independently funded, $300 million ballroom with “BDS,” also known as “ballroom derangement syndrome.”
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