Ah, that we may never know. Or maybe we can find out after (the future, optimistically speaking) investigation.
Hmm, I answered a question you didn’t ask. Whatever he says it will be a lie.
Do we know if this money was given to the government, as opposed to being a personal gift to Trump?
It’s moot. I suspect he doesn’t plan on paying anyone.
The answer that I’ve seen several times is that the money is from private donors. I think we need to see the list of these “private donors”.
For a gift that size, isn’t it pretty much required?
Which is what you’d expect when you have a modern day “Boss” Tweed building his own Tammany Hall.
The term you are looking for is “bullshit”.
Trump wants a White House ballroom. These companies are funding it.
Much is coming from government contractors.
WaPo implies it is probably tax deductible. I cannot see Trump’s IRS challenging such a deduction.
So we pay with higher government contracting costs and lost tax revenue.
Then, as cost overruns mount, donations are likely to be insufficient. At this point, Trump may want donors to switch to the Arch.
My administration will do both.
This is all a 4-D chess move in preparation for attacking Canada. They can’t burn down the white house again if it has already been demolished.
And of course we the taxpayers will be responsible for maintaining this monstrosity in perpetuity, until and unless a future President tears it down.
(Which probably won’t happen even if we get a future sane President because it would be a waste to throw good money after bad to replace it.)
My understanding is that he says it’s because of giving Tylenol for any pain. I don’t know what his explanation is for autism in females (Tylenol for period pains?)
Correction: lack of a standing wall!
While I am pissed off at the destruction of the east wing, it’s a building and can be rebuilt. Trump’s damage to the Federal government’s programs, state sovereignty, our treaties with other countries, and peoples’ trust in their own government – to name but a few – are not so easily repaired. It will take generations.
This is assuming, of course, we get the will to try and repair them in the first place.
We’ve got the list. It’s called the census.
Actually, I’d believe they are in fact donations. And then by a fantastic coincidence the company who made it lands a lucrative government contract or a merger that has been hanging fire for months suddenly gets approved.
It’s called a bribe in most countries.
Not just a waste of money. A President, who isn’t a dictator, would have to get such a big project through Congress. And you are unlikely to get 60 votes in the Senate for destroying a key legacy of of one of our two major political parties.parties.
Figuring out how much of Trump 47 can be undone, without a future Democratic president turning into another dictator, will be challenging.
The American version will be, “I was just doing what I was paid to do.”
They hired private contractors to do the demolition, and no one in security at the White House tried to stop them, so the demolition got done. They never stopped to ask if it was a good idea, they just saw the paycheck and got on with it.
So, the Pentagon has a new gang of idiots reporters as its “Press Pool”:
Among the Pentagon’s new pool of outlets is Timcast, conspiratorial racist Tim Pool’s podcast
…
Similarly, MyPillow founder and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s outlet, LindellTV, will now regurgitate Hegseth’s nonsense to the public.
…
Gateway Pundit, the conservative blog founded and operated by Jim Hoft, also received Pentagon credentials.
Now, sure, these people are all Trump Loyalists, and so we’d expect them to follow the new rules concerning “soliciting” information that hasn’t been approved for publication by Hegseth, et al. But, at the same time, they’re all grifters, and their ultimate allegiance is to themselves and their own profit.
So, I’m taking bets on how long it is before one of them is caught breaking the rules in hopes of finding a lucrative “scoop” they can use to make money.
I am having the same response. It’s the visual destruction that hits me viscerally in a way I had not anticipated. I am quietly enraged.