Transcription
from some Republicans. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh said this. I'm going to read you part of it.
"Quote, I will repeat this every single day for the next three years. Any Democrat running for president in 2028 must pledge to immediately tear down, bulldoze, demolish Trump's ballroom and fully restore the East Wing." Is that overstated or would you agree with that?
That any Democrat who becomes the next president, if and when that were to happen, they should tear down whatever changes Trump's makes.
>> No, I think to really mess with with him, just name it the Barack Obama ballroom and I think that will take care of half the problem.
>> So, don't tear it down. Don't this is a distraction. First of all, he should not have done that. It's the people's house. Number two, where is the president? He's focusing on the ballroom. He's focused on everything, but he's not focused on what's happening right now. Inflation's still high. People can buy what they need to buy. Energy is still high. We have tariff wars that are being caused because he feels icky and feels bad about someone talking bad about him in a commercial. And inflation is about to dull for 24 million Americans. And that's what he cares about. This is Marie Antoinette talking about let them eat cake while Americans are struggling right now. So what I would like for him to do is to focus on this to make sure that we can actually get costs down. People can actually make, you know, a good standard of living right now and be able to pay what they need to survive instead of him focusing on all these little projects which aren't really bringing anything to help any day Americans.
>> Like I'm sure many of you, I watched Trump desecrate the East Wing of the White House and felt that the ease with which he could destroy a long-standing symbol of this country was gross. I'm also a realist though, and I understand that even for as petty as I want his Democratic successor to be, the reality is that that ballroom is likely here to stay. But I really do think that Senator Ggo is right in saying that the simplest solution possible is to simply undermine his fragile ego and rename it after Barack Obama. Hell, maybe even name it the Barack Obama Emmy and Nobel Prizewinning ballroom. It's cheaper than knocking the whole thing down and would actually be more effective at destroying Trump's fragile ego than even tearing the thing down would be. But GGO is right in tying the ballroom to the broader issues in this country. So, I know that people might watch this video and wonder why I'm even bothering to talk about a ballroom. This is just some dumb resistance Twitter issue that doesn't impact real people, but the reality is that it is the perfect microcosm for what Trump's priorities are. And by the way, don't take my word for it.
>> In addition to the ballroom and the Rose Garden patio, is the president looking at any other renovations or significant kind of projects here at the White House?
>> Uh, not to my knowledge, no. But he's a builder at heart, clearly. Uh and so his his heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority.
>> He spent the entire campaign swearing up and down that he was focused on regular people, on the price of housing and rent and groceries and eggs. But it was complete. This is what he's focused on. A ballroom that none of us will ever use. A $400 million Qatari jet retrofitted to the tune of a billion dollars that none of us will ever use. Two Gulfstream jets that cost $172 million that none of us will ever use. Crypto dinners that have led to him doubling his net worth that none of us will ever derive an ounce of benefit from. Don't you see who he's helping here? It is himself. He is heaping more gold and wealth and opulence onto himself by the day and we're all paying for it. Meanwhile, what have Americans gotten these last few months? They've gotten their Medicaid gutted. Their ACA premiums are set to double, triple, or quadruple. Farmers are watching their supply chains vanish. Everybody is watching costs of everyday goods surge. Inflation is rising. Wages are flat. The manufacturing renaissance he promised is non-existent. Jobs are disappearing. And all this time, Trump is immersing himself in gold. And don't take it from me. Just use your own eyes. I'm not the one spending all day bragging about how golden encrusted my surroundings are. He is.
>> It'll be great. It'll be fantastic. You see the way this is looking. Look, N. I can't tell you how much that gold cost, a lot of money. There's nothing like gold and there's nothing like solid gold. But this, this beautiful office needed it. It had to be representative. When we took it over, it was dirty, not clean. I immediately changed the chair and had this beautiful desk renovated, brought out by the White House people that do this. They did a great job and sent it out. We have a craftsman who's great. But uh, this was not appropriate for the Oval Office when I took over. And now you look at all those paintings, you're allowed to turn back. All of these are great presidents and they were all in the vaults. They were in vaults for some cases much more than a hundred years. And now they're proudly hanging on the Oval Office walls and I can't imagine anybody changing it. But they were they were buried in vaults for over a hundred years, many of them. So it's very exciting. People come in. They really love it. They love what we're doing here. They love what we're doing in DC and they love what we're doing most importantly in the country in the world.
>> In fact, I discussed the fact that Trump is focused solely on displaying his own wealth and power while his supporters struggle during my conversation with Jessica Tarlo. I want to use you to test out what I'm going to argue on The Five in a few minutes. Um, it is related to the ballroom because I spent a few days really angry about the ballroom and you know, looking it up like why should it be double the size of the White House and this is the people's house and if you don't think of yourself as a renter, that's why you do such a big renovation and it's pay for play and all this stuff. But is it exactly what Trump and Caroline Levit and all the mouthpieces want is for us to be melting down about the ballroom and not talking about what you were brought up right off the bat, right? Like talking about how the farmers are getting screwed, talk about the cattle ranchers, talking about the tariffs, the government shutdown, saving people's premiums. I'm workshopping it. What do you think? I'll do it a lot better on air, but.
>> I, I think I think they are the same story. I think that Donald Trump, whatever he wants to get done, he gets done, right? He doesn't view anything as an obstacle to barreling ahead and and accomplishing whatever his goals are. Be it the courts, be it prosecutors, be it judges, be it attorneys, be it the Democrats, be it the law, be it the Constitution, he doesn't care about any of those things. When when he wants to do something, he does it. And the fact is that we're seeing where his priorities lie. When he builds himself a $200 million ballroom, when he buys, you know, uh, um, uses taxpayer funds to to retrofit a $400 million jet from Qatar. When he buys Christine Gnome $170 million worth of Gulfstreams, when he decks out the Oval Office in in gold leafing, like that, those things get done because those are his priorities, which underscore the fact that what is not getting done is because he just doesn't care. The fact that farmers are getting screwed right now is because he doesn't care about those farmers. The fact that Americans are going to see healthcare get gutted, whether it's the 17 million Americans who aren't going to get Medicaid, whether it's the 24 million Americans who are going to see their ACA premiums double or triple or quadruple, that's happening because he doesn't care. Again, when he wants to do something like he's doing with this ballroom, he finds a way to get it done. So, everybody that's getting screwed is getting screwed as the direct result of the fact that he does not care about these people. Like when he offered up these populist shticks when he was on the campaign trail, it's because he knew what to say. But he's always been a fake populist. He's always been out for himself. And the fact that he is just adorning his office with gold and surrounding himself with opulence and doubling his net worth is all the proof you need that he was perfectly content to screw over these people, to say whatever he needed to say, to sell them a bill of goods. But now that he's got what he needs from them, he's done helping them. So, this is one of those rare instances where Trump and his team are actually doing a perfectly fine job unto themselves broadcasting where their priorities lie. They have so much oozing contempt for their own voters that even while they're screwing them over, which would be bad enough unto itself, disqualifying enough unto itself, they are actually bragging about the fact that they just don't care. They're bragging that Trump gets his precious ballroom while he over everybody who is foolish enough to believe him as he pretended to be a populist. So the next time you think for even a second that Trump cares about anyone but himself, just remember.
>> Of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority.
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