{"id":76,"date":"2026-05-24T12:08:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=76"},"modified":"2026-05-24T12:08:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:08:51","slug":"trump-talks-up-his-ballroom-plan-dozens-of-times-but-plays-down-americans-economic-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Trump talks up his ballroom plan dozens of times but plays down Americans&#8217; economic pain"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><div><div><ul><li>Summary<\/li><\/ul><\/div><div><\/div><\/div><div>WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) &#8211; Standing in front of the White House ballroom construction site, U.S. President Donald Trump appealed for patience from Americans struggling with soaring gas prices as he sought to justify the cost of a project critics call a vanity effort.<\/div><div>&#8220;This is peanuts,&#8221; he said on Tuesday in an apparent reference \u200bto the economic damage inflicted on the U.S. by the Iran war. &#8220;I appreciate everybody putting up with it for a little while. It won&#8217;t be much longer.&#8221;<\/div><div>The moment crystallized concerns among some in his \u200cRepublican Party, who worry that the billionaire president&#8217;s focus on the ballroom appears insensitive as Americans struggle to fill their gas tanks ahead of November&#8217;s midterm elections.<\/div><div>A Reuters review of Trump&#8217;s public comments shows he has mentioned the ballroom &#8211; either via speeches, social media posts, or in comments to reporters &#8211; at least 40 times this year, including nine times this month alone. By comparison, he mentioned it 35 times in all of 2025.<\/div><div>He is prone to launching into sales pitches for the ballroom at any moment, whether talking to reporters on Air Force One, speaking to guests in the \u200bOval Office or posting on his Truth Social platform.<\/div><div>A White House official rejected Democrats&#8217; contention that the ballroom is a vanity project.<\/div><div>&#8220;This is about legacy, not vanity,&#8221; the official said. &#8220;The president is deeply passionate about this and wants \u200bto get it done.&#8221;<\/div><div>It is hard to quantify how many times Trump has talked about the economy, but as gas prices have spiraled, he has repeatedly played down the economic \u2060impact of the war, counseling patience and offering little acknowledgement of Americans&#8217; financial strain.<\/div><div>\u201cI don\u2019t think about Americans\u2019 financial situation,&#8221; he said earlier this month in a viral off-the-cuff comment about the war&#8217;s economic impact that was seized on by Democrats. \u201cThe only thing that \u200bmatters when I&#8217;m talking about Iran, they can&#8217;t have a nuclear weapon.&#8221;<\/div><h2>SOME REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SAY BALLROOM IS A DISTRACTION<\/h2><div>The Reuters review shows that the ballroom, reconstruction of the Washington Reflecting Pool and plans for a 250-foot Independence Arch in the capital are top \u200bof mind for a president whose second term has been dominated by legacy-building projects.<\/div><div>Even amid crises and diplomatic summits, Trump has kept the ballroom at the forefront. Within hours of an apparent assassination attempt at a Washington hotel, he used the incident to argue for building one. After his high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump posted on Truth Social that the trip reinforced his case.<\/div><div>\u201cChina has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.!\u201d Trump wrote alongside a photo of him and Xi outside Beijing&#8217;s cavernous Great Hall of the People.<\/div><div>In Republican-led focus groups, however, \u200bvoters are expressing concerns over the ballroom and the arch, a senior Republican campaign operative told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss the matter.<\/div><div>&#8220;For voters, the message that is coming from the White House is Trump is focused on vanity projects and foreign \u200bpolicy, and those are things that voters don&#8217;t care about,&#8221; the operative said.<\/div><div>Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said in an interview that the attention being given to the White House ballroom is &#8220;absolutely&#8221; sucking up more time than it should.<\/div><div>&#8220;It would sure be nice if the \u200cpublic understood that \u2060the ballroom itself was private money,&#8221; Lummis said.<\/div><div>Trump says he has raised $400 million from wealthy donors and his own money for the ballroom. The Secret Service, however, has requested $1 billion in taxpayer money to fund security enhancements for the ballroom and the White House complex, a plan that lawmakers, including Republicans, have balked at.<\/div><div>Anxious Republican lawmakers and senior White House aides have for months urged Trump to focus more on the economy as voters look ahead to November, when Republicans are expected to face a difficult fight to retain control of Congress.<\/div><div>&#8220;Trump continues to talk about things that no one cares about,&#8221; said a Republican strategist involved in efforts to help Republicans retain control of Congress. The strategist spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter freely.<\/div><div>Trump&#8217;s \u200banswer to questions about economic concerns is to repeatedly declare \u200bvictory over inflation, despite official data showing otherwise. He has \u2060deflected questions about economic uncertainty by boasting about a rise in the stock market and billions of dollars in foreign investment.<\/div><div>A January prediction from the White House that Trump would make weekly trips to promote Republican candidates and address economic concerns has not panned out.<\/div><div>After a flurry of weekly travel early in the year aimed at promoting his economic record, Trump has largely \u200bstayed at the White House or at his Florida weekend retreat since he launched the Iran war on February 28. He has made only a handful of domestic trips since then.<\/div><h2>CHINA TRIP, \u200bASSASSINATION ATTEMPT<\/h2><div>As Trump faces a series \u2060of political and policy challenges \u2014 including war with Iran, rising fuel costs, and dwindling popularity \u2014 he has increasingly turned to visiting construction sites tied to his initiatives, using them to underscore progress and reassert control over his agenda.<\/div><div>On Tuesday, he took reporters on a tour of the ballroom construction site and proudly described some of its planned security features. A week earlier, he rode in his armored limousine to inspect renovations at Washington&#8217;s Reflecting Pool &#8211; which he has spoken about seven times this month alone.<\/div><div>Democrats who are trying to break \u2060Republicans&#8217; dominance in \u200bCongress in November say Trump&#8217;s focus on legacy projects offers hope.<\/div><div>&#8220;I can&#8217;t imagine that at a time when people are trying to figure out how \u200bto pay for their groceries that are exorbitantly high thanks to Trump&#8217;s tariffs that they&#8217;re (Republicans) focused on a ballroom,&#8221; Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia told Reuters.<\/div><div>&#8220;Tone deaf is an understatement.&#8221;<\/div><div>With polls showing a solid majority of Americans opposed to the ballroom, the message appears to have gotten through to Republicans. The $1 billion \u200bproposal was dropped last week &#8211; at least for now &#8211; from a spending bill in the Senate in a major setback for Trump.<\/div><div><address><div><div><noscript>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" alt=\"Andy Sullivan\" class=\"wp-image-75\" src=\"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/eb3284b2ac0807fb5dc8f48ea73e7419.avif\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/noscript><\/div><div>Andy Sullivan<\/div><\/div><div><ul><li><span><div><svg><title>Email<\/title><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/li><li><span><div><svg><title>X<\/title><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/address><\/div><\/div><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=73\">What is the Oreshnik missile that Russia has fired at Ukraine?<\/a><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=70\">Iran has not agreed to hand over highly enriched uranium stockpile, senior Iranian source tells Reuters<\/a><\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/reliablemovingcrews.com\/?p=68\">Turkey orders police to evict ousted opposition leadership from headquarters<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anxious Republican lawmakers and White House aides worry that the billionaire president&#8217;s focus on a vanity project does not play well with voters struggling to afford gasoline months before elections that will determine which party controls Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-united-states"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trump talks up his ballroom plan dozens of times but plays down Americans&#039; 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