New images available Thursday appear to show the entire White House East Wing has been demolished to make way for President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the demolition as she faced questions from reporters at Thursday’s briefing.
Trump initially said in July that the project would not interfere with the existing White House structure. Then this week, as crews began to raze the East Wing, an official said the “entirety of the East Wing will be modernized” as the massive 90,000 square foot ballroom is built.
By Thursday, satellite images from Planet Labs PBC showed the East Wing reduced to rubble.
“This is the People’s House. Why not inform the public of that change and when it was decided that the East Wing would have to be demolished?” ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Leavitt.
“With any construction project, changes come. And we have informed all of you, we’ve been keeping you apprised of this project. We’ve shown you the renderings,” Leavitt said.
“The plans changed when the president heard counsel from the architects and the construction companies who said that in order for this East Wing to be modern and beautiful for many, many years to come, for it to be a truly strong and stable structure, this phase one that we’re now in was necessary,” Leavitt added.
Jarring images of the construction prompted a wave of backlash and questions, including whether the demolition could have been stopped and who is funding the project.
The White House is requiring at least some of the construction workers tasked with demolishing the East Wing to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from discussing their work, according to a White House official and sources familiar with the project.
A White House official told ABC News that requiring workers to sign NDA’s is “standard” practice, given aspects of the project deal with the operational security of the White House.
“There is nothing unusual about requiring workers to sign NDA’s and it is standard” the White House official said.
Answering reporters’ questions about the project earlier Thursday, Leavitt said: “As for the cost of the ballroom and the construction itself, all of that is going to be, like I’ve said, privately funded and paid for by the president himself and many generous patriots who have stepped up,” Leavitt said. She also said to expect a dollar amount from Trump on how much of his own resources he will be committing to build the ballroom, which he has wanted to do for years.
Later on Thursday, Trump was asked by ABC’s Bruce if he’d raised the full $300 million to fund the ballroom.
“Yeah. Actually, we’ve raised I think $350 million,” Trump said. “It’s all donor money and money that we put up, we’ve raised — it’s gonna be, it’s gonna cost right in the neighborhood of $300 million. Its been expanded and made absolutely — it’ll be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.”
On how much he will spend personally, Trump said: “I won’t be able to tell you until I finish, but I’ll donate whatever is needed, I’ll tell you that.”
Asked by ABC White House Correspondent Karen Travers how much of his own money he was planning to donate to the ballroom, Trump replied, “Oh, millions of dollars. Yeah. Well, I also give, you know, I give a lot of money to the White House. The White House is, as you know, I give my salary, and I usually like to steer it to the White House because this house was a little bit abandoned.”
As for a possible name for the ballroom, Trump demurred and told reporters he wouldn’t get into that at this stage. Leavitt, at her briefing, had said there will be an official name for the ballroom and that Trump would announce it once he decided.
According to a White House official, plans for the ballroom still have not been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission. Leavitt on Thursday, when asked if the president can tear down anything he wants at the White House, argued they do not need to seek approval to demolish only for vertical construction.
Trump himself, at a dinner for the donors earlier this month, said he was told by “two men” that he could make changes quickly, without approval.
“I said, ‘How long would it take?’ They said: ‘Sir, you can start tonight. You have zero zoning conditions. You have no approvals,'” Trump said at the dinner. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ He said, ‘Sir, this is the White House. You’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.'”
