If you can afford the finest finery and are potential White House Ballroom guests, you deserve protection and more of it. Ordinary Americans, good luck

Donald Trump showing off the White House ballroom on the Air Force One last month. Screen shot: reuters/YouTube

It is the summer of 2028 in America, and it has been a difficult year so far for the United States. The heat has broken all existing records, crop yield has declined in normally fertile California and elsewhere, and punishing tariffs have made even a can of tomato soup as affordable as gold. People are exhausted, dirty, and hungry. They are angry too. With what strength they could muster, they gather outside the White House gates, hoping that a kind soul such as Karoline Leavitt may come by and offer them a hamburger. But there is no one except the security detail, every uniformed personnel buffed up and appearing to have benefitted from a well-stocked fridge. The news of the hungry hordes has, thankfully, reached the ears of Melania Trump, who is in the middle of a couture fitting, wearing heels, and attended by her trusty dress lieutenant Hervé Pierre. “Hungry?” She is not sure what that means and tries to recall what that might feel like. Then an idea strikes as quickly as a collar shape coming to her. Pleased with herself, she says: “Let them eat cake. There must be some leftovers from last night’s fabulous party at the very secure Big Beautiful Ballroom. Go. Get. Quick.”

Pivot to the present. Just two days ago, the annual White House Correspondence Dinner (WHCD) was underway and Donald Trump, attending for the first time, was busy at his table on stage, looking the big, beautiful president that he is when shots that sounded like silver trays crashing to the ground rang out. At first, he didn’t budge, but then the secret service quickly moved in. They first removed JD Vance, before hurdling Mr Trump, his wife and a very pregnant Karoline Leavitt away. Attendees were stunned as they cowered below the tables, mid-meal. The gunman was quickly apprehended and stripped, and pinned to the ground, a floor above the dinner. The WHCD, a highlight of the Washington social calendar, was no more. But back in the White House, just minutes away from the horribly unsafe hotel ballroom, Mr Trump, still in his tuxedo, also as lumpy as his work suits, held a press conference. He was as calm as a target in a firing range. (In an interview with 60 Minutes next day, he said he was fearless during the shooting because he saw “a lot of very strong, physically strong, really attractive law enforcement people ”.) And he quickly went on to speak about his beloved ballroom: “I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s much more secure. It’s got – it’s drone-proof, it’s bulletproof glass.”

Mr Trump addressing the media in his lumpy tuxedo-jacket after the shooting during the WHCD. Screen shot: facethenation/YouTube

After that gun attack that was not just a personal threat, but that of an entire ballroom of dinner guests, Mr Trump essentially played salesman of a ballroom he desperately needed to build. The pivot from a security failure at a Washington hotel to the necessity of a US$400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom is beautifully warped and grossly Trumpian. Rather than initiate a conversation on the legislative or social roots of gun violence, the narrative has was chanelled into a discussion about panic-room architecture, used mostly for dining and dancing. An expensive and expansive ballroom, rather than necessary gun control measures and laws, is just crazy and unfathomable. But that is how the current administration likes it to be. Among industrialised and high-income nations of the world, the United States has the largest number of deaths due to gun violence, with a gun homicide rate 26 times higher than other high-income countries, according to everytownresearch.org. Yet, a fancy and well-secured ballroom is more crucial to a president than the many more compatriots to die (or already dead) on the streets and in schools. Outside the U.S., a leader allowed to frame something like a ballroom as a defining achievement while urgent crises go unaddressed is totally baffling. It’s hard for many to tell if it’s a failure of leadership or just a commitment to interior design as a crisis management strategy.

Any building in the White House complex sits on protected compound. Security for individual structures can be enhanced. They don’t have to be torn down and rebuilt. According to Politico, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the building would be a “safe environment” for events. He did not mention the safe environment that the whole of the country needs. Karoline Leavitt later told the media that it is “critical for our national security”. Clearly, a glittery and guarded ballroom is the perfect contrast to the street encampment that the homeless have set up throughout the major cities of America. So many Americans have no homes and have to make do and sleep on the streets; they can be unintentionally dead from a drive-by shooting. Yet Donald Trump is building a ballroom. Immense resources are being thrown onto a building project that will serve only the elite. CEOs, cohorts, canvassers, and cronies will have a hobnobbing hub to wear their finest finery, eat the choicest cut of steak, and guzzle the most expensive champagne, all imported, of course. In 2028, Melania Trump stands tall in her Manolos and looks back to this day and says to the media, “Jimmy Kimmel, you are so wrong.” Then corrects herself: “Oh, I mean, so wonderful to have this ballroom. My husband did the right thing. If no party last night, no leftover cake to share today.”

Updated: 28 April 2026, 15:35