President Donald Trump’s ballroom dancing saga at the White House last week followed a familiar Trump-era arc: A group 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 group of others questioned what the big deal was.
After all, he’s just building a ballroom. And the White House needed a ballroom!
“Of all the reasons to criticize President Trump, this must be considered the silliest,” wrote the often Trump-skeptical National Review.
The Washington Post editorial board said Trump was characteristically “pursuing a reasonable idea in the most discordant way possible.” But she praised him for moving forward and taking “a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere.”
Well, it turns out that most Americans see a lot to dislike about Trump’s handling of the East Wing and the ballroom.
In fact, it appears to be one of the most unpopular things he has done in this second term. And it’s not just those who don’t like Trump who oppose him.
The new Yahoo News-YouGov and Washington Post-ABC News polls are the first quality polls to delve into the ballroom saga. And they both show similar things.
The first shows that Americans disapproved of Trump’s demolition of the East Wing (57%-26%), his plans to replace it with a 90,000-square-foot ballroom (61%-25%), and his broader handling of the situation (55%-28%), all by a margin of about 2 to 1.
The latter shows that Americans also oppose the broader project by a margin of 2 to 1, 56%-28%.
Even Trump supporters don’t defend him much.
For example, only 55% of Republicans in the Yahoo poll approved both the demolition of the east wing and the construction of a ballroom. That compares to 94% of Democrats who disapproved of both. About a quarter of Republicans disapproved of both charges.
In fact, the passion on this issue seems to be largely on the “anti” side.
In both polls, the percentage strongly opposed to the project far exceeded the percentage strongly in favor: 46%-18% in the Yahoo poll and 45%-15% in the Post-ABC poll. In both polls, about half of independents were strongly opposed.
then this does they seem to have greatly encouraged people of all kinds.
None of that means this will be a game-changer on a political issue that will suddenly cause Trump’s overall approval numbers to plummet to new levels. But it does reinforce the fact that he keeps doing pretty random things, which gives a lot of people reasons to not like what they’re seeing, even, it seems, some people who generally approve of him.
An important question from there is why people disapprove of it.
Is it just because they don’t like change very much? Were the images of the demolished east wing so jarring? Or perhaps people objected to the lack of transparency and the fact that Trump downplayed the scope of construction. (Trump said less than three months ago that the ballroom project “will not 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 could actually point in another direction.
While people disapproved by a margin of about 2 to 1 no matter how the question was asked, in the Yahoo poll they were actually slightly more likely to oppose the ballroom plans (61%) than the demolition of the east wing (57%).
That’s a bit counterintuitive.
The demolition of the east wing was the discordant part. You could see a situation where people might think the ballroom is nice and even necessary, but they don’t like how the east wing was summarily torn down. But in fact, Americans disliked the ballroom a little more than the demolition of the east wing.
What that might suggest: People really don’t 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 for these kinds of optical issues. He has gilded the interior of the White House. He and his family have taken little care to protect themselves from accusations that they 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 the government shutdown, Trump is abroad accepting gifts like a gold 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 that 61% of Americans and even 31% of Republican-leaning people said they believe Trump has at least “probably” misused his office to enrich himself, his friends and his family.
A CBS News-YouGov poll conducted around the same time showed that 75% of Americans said Trump was not focused enough on the issue of “lowering the prices of goods and services.”
In other words, it doesn’t seem like a good time to tear down part of the White House under the guise of building an expensive party venue. And Trump did a great job of making sure people realized that’s exactly what he was doing.
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