The Ballroom Might Not be Funded by Taxpayers, But it's Close Enough
The donors contributing to the White House’s new addition are the very same ripping off working people and enjoying the fruits of corporate socialism.
The Trump administration completed demolition of the East Wing of the White House last week to make way for a sorely needed ballroom. Amidst a contentious government shutdown, and precarity for the working class, the Trump administration has made sure to prioritize the important things: leisure and luxury for the elites. As if working people needed this perfectly illustrative — and grotesque — symbol of the growing class divide.
Presumably aware of the optics nightmare it would be to use taxpayer funds for such a flagrantly unnecessary project, the White House has said no tax dollars are being used for this $300 million endeavor (up from the $200 million price tag given by Trump at the end of July). Instead, it’s being funded through private donations and Trump himself, who has pledged $22 million.
While this project might not be siphoning off taxpayer money in the most direct sense, those funding it represent some of the most powerful corporate actors profiting off working people through labor exploitation, tax breaks, public subsidies, monopolistic control, the military-industrial complex, and government capture.
Donors include defense contractors Palantir, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton; tech companies Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Coinbase; and communications companies T-Mobile and Comcast. (The full list of donors is below.)
Corresponding contribution amounts have not been disclosed, though Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company and owner of YouTube, agreed to a $24.5 million settlement over Trump’s YouTube suspension following Jan. 6, with $22 million of that directed to the Trust for the National Mall, which is overseeing funding and construction of the ballroom.
Palantir, Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton have extracted billions through taxpayer-funded federal contracts with the DHS, DDS, and ICE, while Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Meta have built empires on union-busting, surveillance capitalism, and antitrust violations.
Utility and energy monopolies such as NextEra Energy and Union Pacific have used political influence to protect profits at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment. Meanwhile, consumer corporations such as Comcast, T-Mobile and tobacco giants Altria and Reynolds continue to extract wealth through deceptive billing, addictive products, and monopolistic control.
While Palantir profits off our private data and outfits Trump’s deportation machine with surveillance tech; Blackstone gobbles up housing, driving up rents and making cities and towns unaffordable; Microsoft and Google provide tech support for Israel’s genocide of Gaza, and Lockheed Martin manufactures the weapons used to drop the bombs; Amazon has laid the foundation for the modern union-busting playbook, pouring millions into crushing workers; and Union Pacific spews hazardous waste into the environment, leaving the mess for us all.
Not only that, many of these same corporations bankrolling the renovation are cashing in on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Estimates say the law’s revived tax breaks for capital and R&D spending could deliver between $55 and $75 billion to tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tesla. For this year alone, analysts estimated Alphabet’s share of the public pie at $17.3 billion, Amazon’s at $15.6 billion, Microsoft’s at $12.4 billion, and Meta’s at a hair under $11 billion — public giveaways to the companies now underwriting this “privately funded” White House addition.
Remember the Trump administration’s “loyalty scorecard” for corporations? I would guess these companies are hoping these donations, composed in large part from money sucked from the public, will bump up their loyalty scores. And if that’s the case, it does appear to be working. Last week, donors — including representatives from Amazon, Lockheed Martin and Google — were invited to a White House dinner to celebrate their willingness to shower Trump with working-class blood money.
Corporations aren’t the only ones looking to prove their loyalty to Trump. Billionaire Republican backers also feature heavily on the list of donors. Paolo Tiramani, founder of Boxabl, has donated $10 million in stock. Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private equity ghouls Blackstone; Harold Hamm, founder of the oil company, and fracking specialists, Continental Resources; José Fanjul, sugar industry magnate; and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founders of the cryptocurrency Gemini, are among the billionaire donors. (Again, the full list is below.)
Again, whether the ballroom is being funded directly with our tax dollars is irrelevant. Together, these donors are ripping off working people, funneling tax dollars back to themselves through tax breaks and subsidies, and using those gains to consolidate an authoritarian order that serves only themselves.
Connected to the White House via a glass bridge, the new ballroom is expected to be an overwhelming 90,000 square feet — far larger than the 55,000 square foot White House itself. Even with its massive size, Trump insisted earlier this summer the East Wing would remain untouched: “It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.” (Interestingly, the classified Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC, which has grown out of the former World War II-era bomb shelter, sits beneath what was the East Wing.)
Despite these assurances, the East Wing was demolished in quite Trumpian fashion — during a government shutdown, while the National Capital Planning Commission, responsible for federal building projects, was closed. The White House claimed it did not need approval for the demolition, though the National Trust for Historic Preservation urged a pause and the completion of “legally required public review processes.”
Constructed in 1942 by FDR — champion of New Deal politics, the closest we’ve come to a politics of care for the American public — the East Wing would seem an emblem of everything Trump hates. Its sudden demolition to make way for a garish new symbol of fascistic consolidation of state and corporate power at the expense of working people seems appropriate in this second Gilded Age. Not content with merely tearing down a historic piece of “the people’s house” to remake in their own vulgar likeness, Trump and the elites are rubbing our noses in it.
Corporate/Institutional Donors include:
Altria Group
Amazon.com, Inc.
Apple Inc.
Booz Allen Hamilton
Caterpillar Inc.
Coinbase Global, Inc.
Comcast Corporation
Hard Rock International
Google (via YouTube settlement)
HP Inc.
Lockheed Martin Corporation
Meta Platforms, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
NextEra Energy, Inc.
Palantir Technologies Inc.
Ripple Labs Inc.
Reynolds American Inc.
T‑Mobile US, Inc.
Tether America LLC
Union Pacific Corporation
Individual/Family Donors include:
Adelson Family Foundation
Stefan E. Brodie
Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
Charles & Marissa Cascarilla
Edward & Shari Glazer
Harold Hamm
Benjamin Leon Jr.
The Lutnick Family (e.g., Howard Lutnick)
Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Konstantin Sokolov
Kelly Loeffler & Jeff Sprecher
Paolo Tiramani
Cameron Winklevoss & Tyler Winklevoss
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