The panelists of “The View” think President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom plans aren’t helping him beat the “king” allegations.
During Thursday’s episode, ABC’s Joy Behar called the $300 million renovation a “Let them eat cake” moment, comparing the president and his pet project to the out-of-touch aristocrats who thumbed their noses at peasants’ struggles before being overthrown during the French Revolution.
Alyssa Farah Griffin kicked off the conversation, explaining that it wasn’t the ballroom in and of itself that bothered her, but how the lavish renovation seemed like an absurd thing to focus on while Americans are worrying how to pay their bills, find work or put food on the table.
“I don’t really care about the ballroom, per se,” she explained. “I care about two things: The American people are struggling. The economy is not rip-roaring the way that we were promised that it was going to. I think of all my relatives who voted for Trump, who really thought, ‘This guy’s gonna bring the country back, he’s gonna make my paycheck go further.’ And that’s just not what we’re seeing right now.”
Highlighting just a few of the struggles regular people are contending with, Griffin said, “Unemployment is too high. … You’ve seen major American manufacturers had their worst quarter last year in years, which, we were promised he was going to bring back American manufacturing.”
“This juxtaposition, if he’s building his grand ballroom while everyone is still hurting, bothers me,” she went on, before noting that while she did appreciate the fact the ballroom is being paid for by donors, and not taxpayers, she worried that it could end up as a “pay for play” scheme to gain greater political influence.
“I don’t want the biggest corporations in America feeling like they own a piece of the White House,” Griffin continued. “Like they can cut a fat check and then they feel entitled to meeting, to whatever it might be on policy that they want. It’s not unprecedented, but I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s seemly.”
Putting things in context, Sara Haines said, “You’ve got people lining up at food banks to feed their family who are still called to show up at work, some of them. This is a disturbing optical problem that really is, it should be an embarrassment right now.”
“Why do the words ‘French Revolution’ keep coming into my head? ‘Let them eat cake,’” Joy Behar added.
Long misattributed to 18th-century French queen Marie Antoinette but first found in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 24 years before the revolution, the phrase recounts an unnamed princess’ callous reply after being told that starving peasants were without bread.
Millions of Americans seemed to see parallels between Trump and the monarchs of the past as they showed up for “No Kings” protests across the country last weekend.
Asked to comment on the show of resistance last Sunday, a clearly irritated Trump called the demonstrations “a joke,” and insisted, “I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great, that’s all it is. I’m not a king, at all.”
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