The building Donald Trump keeps calling a “ballroom” isn’t really a ballroom. Most of the structure they’re building is underneath the ballroom — 6 stories underground. That’s the real story. The ballroom is just the fancy “cover” on top.
In May, standing in front of the construction pit where the East Wing of the White House used to be, the President described the 90,000-square-foot building going up as ‘a cover for what's underneath it.’
He'd said the same thing weeks earlier, telling reporters the structure “essentially becomes a shed for what's being built under.”
According to the President, the complex below the surface is going to be six stories deep. He’s said that the underground portion of the ballroom project is more complex than the building (ballroom) on top of it.
That’s very different from the project he announced on July 31, 2025.
What he said and what has changed
The original pitch was a $200 million event space seating 650 Epstein-class guests, paid for by Trump and private donors.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said nothing would be torn down. Trump said, “ It won't interfere with the current building.”
Fourteen months later, the entire 123-year-old East Wing is nothing but a pile of toxic rubble. The Trump administration hauled the debris, including mud, rebar and plaster containing toxic metals, from the demolition site, dumping it onto a public golf course in D.C.
Beginning in October 2025, the Trump administration started dumping truckloads of dirt and debris from the East Wing demolition at East Potomac Golf Links without notifying the public.
Public health experts expressed concerns that the administration had rushed the demolition without testing for asbestos first.
The East Wing likely had asbestos in its insulation, flooring and other construction materials. Demolishing an old building would normally require safety measures and protections to prevent asbestos exposure — when the destruction of a building that contains asbestos releases microscopic carcinogenic (causes cancer) fibers into the air.
We’ve all seen television commercials from law firms asking if “you or a loved one has been diagnosed with Mesothelioma’ — the type of cancer caused primarily by asbestos exposure, which accounts for more than 80% of cases.
The National Parks Service tested samples of the soil from different locations at the golf course. Later, data was released showing that the soil found on East Potomac Golf Links tested positive for lead, chromium, and other toxic metals.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, dedicated in 1965 was demolished along with the East Wing, its I.M. Pei pergola hauled into storage and its trees shipped to nurseries.
Two historic magnolias planted for Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt came down with it.
The East Wing had housed every modern first lady's office, the social secretary, the White House calligrapher — and, underneath, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the World War II–era bunker where Dick Cheney sat on September 11.
Melania Trump's staff was relocated to the Eisenhower building.
The PEOC was demolished.
Six stories down
Here's what the administration has publicly acknowledged is being built underneath the ballroom, most of it from Trump's own remarks to reporters at the site on May 19:
- A military hospital
- "Research facilities" — never explained, never specified
- Meeting rooms built for military use
- Bomb shelters and medical facilities
- A replacement for the destroyed PEOC, with hardened secure communications
- A drone storage and launch system for the drone port on the roof
The exact floor-by-floor layout has never been released. The National Capital Planning Commission's filed plan puts roughly 22,000 square feet underground, though defense reporters who've looked at the site think the excavation covers far more of the building's footprint than that.
Then there's the roof. Trump says it's bulletproof, drone-proof and missile-proof, with what he called "great sniper capacity" — and that it will function as a launch platform.
He promised “the greatest drone empire you've ever seen” up there, with systems stored in the lower levels underneath the ballroom that can be brought to the roof.
He later added that the drone port was supposed to be classified until the lawsuit forced it out.
So: a hardened military installation with an air defense node on top, “disguised” as a big, beautiful, golden gala venue.
The money got away from everyone
The cost went from $200 million to $300 million by October 2025, to $400 million by March 2026. On March 31, Trump told reporters “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”
That wasn't true when he said it. The Washington Post obtained Clark Construction's internal estimates showing the project had already hit $600 million by March, with public money covering roughly half.
Secret Service funds paid for site preparation — $3.6 million — before demolition even started, plus $1.6 million budgeted for the teardown itself.
Congressional Republicans then tried to attach $1 billion in White House "security" funding to an immigration enforcement bill, $220 million of it directed to the ballroom complex.
The Senate parliamentarian ruled in May that it didn't qualify for the filibuster-proof process.
Remember the video of Trump supporters reacting to the new ballroom?
Who's writing the checks
The White House released 37 donor names in October 2025 and hasn't updated the list publicly since.
It's essentially a directory of companies with business before the federal government: Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Comcast, T-Mobile, Caterpillar, Altria, Reynolds American, NextEra, Union Pacific, HP.
Crypto is heavily represented — Coinbase, Ripple, Tether America, the Winklevoss twins. So are individuals: the Adelson family, Harold Hamm, Stephen Schwarzman, the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler and her husband.
Alphabet's $22 million came out of a settlement over YouTube banning Trump after January 6. Lockheed reportedly gave more than $10 million.
The donations run through the Trust for the National Mall, a National Park Service nonprofit partner that normally handles cherry trees and horse stables.
It keeps 2.5 percent of the first $200 million and 2 percent after — potentially $10 million in fees. It has refused to name donors, citing nonprofit confidentiality rules, and told Sen. Elizabeth Warren it will continue to allow donors to remain anonymous.
An underground presidential bunker already existed
The administration's core legal argument is national security. Three former officials told the Post that the White House already has what Trump says he's building: a facility 60 feet underground, finished under Obama, that two of them described as capable of surviving a nuclear blast and sheltering the president and dozens of staff for weeks.
Can’t stop, won’t stop
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in December. Judge Richard Leon halted above-ground work in the spring while explicitly allowing the bunker to proceed. The D.C. Circuit upheld him in August.
Then on August 31, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that construction continues — not because the project is legal, but because the Trust probably lacks standing to sue at all.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson in dissent, writing that the decision was "no victory for the separation of powers."
Roberts wrote that the White House ballroom project was “likely unlawful.”
At the current pace of construction, with 250 workers on site, we could see a finished ballroom within the next two years. That means the complex underneath the ballroom and the fancy golden “lid” on top will be substantially finished before any court decides whether it was even allowed.
It's scheduled to open in September 2028.
A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll last October found 56% of Americans opposed the demolition of the East Wing. Nobody asked them about the drone port.
