Wyoming Delegation Defends Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Ballroom’ From Critics

Wyoming’s congressional delegation is defending President Donald Trump while he draws pointed criticism from Democrats as heavy equipment has demolished the East Wing of the White House to make way for a $250 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

Trump is hitting back with a scathing White House timeline that highlights important additions and changes to the building, along with scandals from Democratic administrations.

The timeline notes that President Harry Truman gutted the White House in 1948, the addition of the Rose Garden in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson’s watch, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt adding the East Wing in 1942.

It also points out that cocaine was discovered in the West Wing in 2023 during President Joe Biden’s administration, along with a photo of his son, Hunter Biden. And it calls out President Bill Clinton’s Oval Office affair with intern Monica Lewinsky in 1998, featuring a photo of Clinton and Lewinsky.

Wyoming Supports The ‘Big Beautiful Ballroom’

While Democrats are calling out the ballroom construction as a slap in the face to federal employees not working during the shutdown, Wyoming’s Republican delegation says the project is privately funded and will make the White House even more grand.

“He is doing, with non-public money, an addition of a ballroom,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis on Thursday’s “Cowboy State Daily Show with Jake.”

“I’ve been in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, and this is going to be very similar: very beautiful, very White House worthy,” Lummis said.

She then laughed when host Jake Nichols sarcastically referred to the project as the “Big Beautiful Ballroom” and jokingly asked if there’s “any truth to the rumor that you are the heavy machine operator with the East Wing demolition?”

“You know, I wish I were,” Lummis said. “That’s a really fun activity, being able to tear a façade off.”

She also said the huge space with room for 1,000 guests “will be a big room they can use to entertain heads of state and have other important events. It’s going to be lovely.”

Senate Republican Whip Sen. John Barrasso said that criticism being lobbed at Trump over demolishing a historic and important American structure is off base. There are plenty of other examples of presidents making renovations, improvements and additions, he said.

“Presidents throughout history have made their own improvements and additions to the White House,” he said in a statement to Cowboy State Daily. “The White House ballroom, which President Trump is building at no expense to taxpayers, will provide a venue fit for entertaining heads of state and other dignitaries.”

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman shot down accusations that tearing down the East Wing and building the new ballroom is about Trump’s ego.

“Presidents and their administrations have sought a larger event space on the White House grounds for years,” she said in a statement to Cowboy State Daily. “President Trump is making important changes to make the White House complex more functional, and we can trust he’ll do it in a truly beautiful fashion.”

The Critics

Spending $250 million on a ballroom, even if privately funded, is a slap in the face to average Americans dealing with inflation and an ongoing government shutdown, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.

“Oh, you’re trying to say the cost of living is skyrocketing?” she posted to X. “Donald Trump can’t hear you over the sound of bulldozers demolishing a wing of the White House to build a new grand ballroom.”

U.S. Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, said in a statement that the ballroom is “an insult to the American people and a betrayal of his obligation to safeguard our history and heritage.”

He said that what Trump is doing to the White House goes far beyond what other presidents have done.

“While each president has left some mark on the building, none has attempted to so drastically alter its fundamental structure and purpose,” King said. “The White House does not belong to President Trump; it belongs to the American people.”

In a Thursday letter to the president, a trio of Democratic House members call for more transparency about the project. Most notably, that the ballroom plans haven’t been reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission, which the White House has said it will do.

But the demolition is already underway, write Reps. Jared Huffman and Robert Garcia of California, and Yassamin Ansari of Arizona.

“The National Capital Planning Commission, which has an important oversight role over the construction, is ‘closed during the federal government shutdown,’ calling into question whether the commission provided any substantive input on proposed construction,” they write.

They also ask Trump to provide the plans, a list of historic preservation agencies consulted, and a list of everyone who donated to the project and how much they gave.

‘Glorious’

The criticism so far seems to be falling on deaf ears, with the White House calling it “manufactured outrage” expressed by “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies … clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House.”

In a Wednesday press briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said the ballroom will be “glorious” and mentioned how President Truman “ripped everything up to put (in) a bowling alley” and that President Barack Obama “added a basketball court.”

Lummis and Barrasso were among the Senate Republicans at a White House Rose Garden lunch with the president on Tuesday.

While eating cheeseburgers and french fries with Trump, they also could hear the demolition happening, Lummis said.

“You could hear the construction,” she said. “And the president even said — he put his (hand to his ear) and goes, ‘Oh, there’s the beautiful sound of construction. I love it.’”

Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.