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Sixteen days into a government shutdown with no end in sight, while his administration tries to slash everything from special education funds to antiterrorism programs, Donald Trump hosted a fancy fundraiser on Wednesday to celebrate the donors who are aiding the construction of a new ballroom on the White House grounds.
Because when your party is defending a prolonged shutdown by portraying itself as populist heroes, nothing signals “populism” quite like hosting a ritzy benefit to shower praise on some of the world’s richest people for their willingness to aid the latest addition to the president’s growing list of self-serving vanity projects.
The White House, apparently unapologetic about the optics, posted video from the occasion.
I defy you to find a more fitting image to encapsulate Trump’s expressed desire to drag the U.S. back to the Gilded Age — an era of corporate corruption and government graft — than the president standing in front of gold brocade curtains and raving about all the rich people clamoring to give him money.
At the dinner, Trump also unveiled plans to construct a new arch across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial, which he told a CBS News reporter earlier is being built for “me.”
Of the ballroom, Trump has previously said “I’m paying for it,” and the White House has said the entire project will be privately funded, which, if true, raises ethical concerns. According to CBS News, attendees at Wednesday’s dinner included representatives from a variety of companies: Some, like Palantir, have signed multibillion-dollar government contracts, and others, like Google, have coordinated personal business arrangements with Trump (Google’s donation to Trump’s ballroom project was reportedly a condition of its recent multimillion-dollar settlement of the lawsuit Trump brought against Google-owned YouTube, which he claimed infringed on his rights when it banned him following the Jan. 6 insurrection). Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC, was represented at the event, as well.
Per CBS News:
It’s not clear how many of Wednesday’s roughly 128 attendees have already opened their wallets for the $200 million ballroom project, but Mr. Trump thanked the people in the room for giving ‘tremendous amounts of money.’ He said the cost has been ‘fully taken care of.’
The president hasn’t done his party any favors in its attempt to win a messaging war with Democrats as the government shutdown drags on. His repeated authoritarian threats to use the shutdown to eliminate only “Democrat agencies” have proved false, as his cuts have hurt bipartisan priorities and arguably made him appear to relish the benefits that a shutdown supposedly affords him. Multiple Republicans have complained publicly that Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s eagerness to slash programs is hampering negotiations to reopen the government.
Also undercutting Trump’s “America First” rhetoric (as my colleague Steve Benen recently noted) is the Trump administration’s pledge of $40 billion in funds to Argentina to prop up its faltering economy and aid a Trump ally ahead of that country’s elections.
The president’s golden ballroom fundraiser provides yet more fodder to Democrats as they look to portray Trump and his party as out of touch with Americans amid the shutdown.