President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom saga last week followed a familiar Trump-era arc: A bunch of the president’s critics sounded the alarm about his latest provocation – in this case, the sudden and surprising demolition of the East Wing – and a bunch of other people questioned what the big deal was.
He’s just building a ballroom, after all. And the White House kind of needed a ballroom!
“Of all the reasons to criticize President Trump, this must count as the silliest,” the often-Trump-skeptical National Review wrote.
The Washington Post editorial board said Trump was characteristically “pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible.” But it praised him for charging ahead and delivering “a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”
Well, it turns out most Americans see plenty to dislike about Trump’s handling of the East Wing and the ballroom.
In fact, it appears to be one of the more unpopular things he’s done in this second term. And it’s not just those who dislike Trump that are objecting.
A new Yahoo News-YouGov poll is the first quality survey to dig into the ballroom saga in depth.
It shows Americans disapproved of Trump’s demolition of the East Wing (57%-26%), his plans for replacing it with a 90,000-square foot ballroom (61%-25%) and his broader handling of the situation (55%-28%) all by around a 2-to-1 margin.
Even Trump’s supporters aren’t defending him too hard.
For instance, just 55% of Republicans approved of both demolishing the East Wing and building a ballroom. That’s compared to 94% of Democrats who disapproved of both. Around one-quarter of Republicans disapproved on both counts.
Indeed, the passion on this issue seems to be very much on the “anti” side.
Just 18% of Americans strongly approved of Trump’s handling of the situation, compared to 46% who strongly disapproved. And those strongly disapproving included a majority of independents: 52%.
So this does appear to have animated people of many stripes, to a significant extent.
None of that means this is a game-changer of a political issue which will suddenly send Trump’s overall approval numbers plummeting to new depths. But it does reinforce that he just keeps doing things rather haphazardly that give lots of people reason to dislike what they’re seeing – even, it seems, some people who generally approve of him.
An important question from there is why people disapprove.
Is it just because they don’t really like change? Were the images of the demolished East Wing just that jarring? Or maybe people objected to the lack of transparency and the fact that Trump downplayed the extent of the construction. (Trump said less than three months ago that the ballroom project “won’t interfere with the current building,” even though the White House had released images showing the gigantic ballroom completely replacing the East Wing.)
All of those are valid hypotheses. But the numbers might actually point in another direction.
While people disapproved by about a 2-to-1 margin no matter how you asked the question, they were actually slightly more likely to object to the ballroom plans (61%) than they were to the demolition of the East Wing (57%).
That’s a little counter intuitive.
The East Wing demolition was the jarring part. You could see a situation in which people might think the ballroom is okay and even necessary, but don’t like how the East Wing was summarily torn down. But in fact, Americans disliked the ballroom slightly more than the East Wing teardown.
What that might suggest: People don’t really like the idea of building an elaborate new $300 million ballroom – privately funded, Trump says – on the White House grounds during a time of significant economic hardship and inflation.
Trump has shown remarkably little concern about these kinds of optics issues. He’s gilded the interior of the White House. He and his family have taken little care to insulate themselves from allegations that they’ve ignored conflicts of interest and enriched themselves using the presidency, most notably with their crypto ventures. Even as the country is dealing with the impacts of a government shutdown, Trump is overseas accepting gifts like a golden crown from South Korea.
There are signs that maybe people are starting to pay attention to this. A Pew Research Center poll conducted a month ago showed 61% of Americans and even 31% of Republican-leaning people said they believe Trump has at least “probably” improperly used his office to enrich himself, his friends and his family.
A CBS News-YouGov poll around the same time showed 75% of Americans said Trump wasn’t focused enough on the issue of “lowering prices of goods and services.”
In other words, it doesn’t seem to have been a great time to bulldoze part of the White House in the name of building an expensive place to hold parties. And Trump did a great job of making sure people noticed that’s exactly what he was doing.
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