Donald Trump woke up early Saturday to lash out at CNN host Kaitlan Collins for pointing out the rising cost of his ever-growing new ballroom.
“Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago,” he began his misspelled rant on Truth Social Saturday morning.
The ballroom was expected to cost $200 million when first announced and is already $100 million over budget—but Trump offered several justifications for the wild expense of his vanity project.
“...it is going to be double the size, and the quality of finishes and interiors has been brought to the highest level,” he wrote, adding that it would also boast a lovely view.
Despite the high cost and ongoing building—for which official plans have not yet been submitted—the president claimed: “It is actually under budget and ahead of schedule, as my jobs always are. It’s just much bigger and more beautiful than originally planned.”
Trump concluded his salvo with a hit at CNN, which has the dubious honor of being in the ‘Hall of Shame’ of the White House’s new ‘fake news’ watchdog.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, and the guy who runs the whole corrupt operation that owns it, is one of the worst in the business,” he raged.
“Their ratings are so low that they’re not even counted or relevant anymore. MAGA!!!”
Collins reported from the White House on The Source soon before Trump’s post, pointing out a crane undertaking construction on the ballroom and stating that costs had “ballooned.”
At present, the bill is being footed by a range of corporate donors including Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Amazon and Comcast, with JPMorgan Chase having opted to stay clear of the project.
While Trump’s hit at Collins suggested that everything was going well with building, this week he suffered his latest setback with the loss of his initial architect, James McCrery II.
The Washington Post reported that McCrery cautioned Trump against his supersized plans—and the president, loyal to his own gigantomania, opted to hire willing architect Shalom Baranes to take the lead.
A White House official told the Beast that McCrery had not been fired and would continue on the project as a “valuable consultant.”
Trump still hopes to have the ballroom completed by 2029 in line with the end of his second term.
According to the New York Times, he’s willing to jump through many hoops to make that happen. The publication reported that Trump gave ballroom workers the green light to ignore standard zoning, permitting, and code requirements in place of a more lax White House-specific code.
