Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former aide to Donald Trump in his first term, slammed the president on Tuesday after crews began to demolish the White House’s East Wing to clear the way for his 90,000-square-foot, $250 million ballroom.
“The optics, Americans are struggling … The cost of living is not coming down, you have more unemployed Americans than you do jobs available right now,” said “The View” host.
“It feels like Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake, we’re building a ballroom while [you] pay the bill.”
Moments earlier, Griffin said she fears the planned event space — which Trump claims to be at “zero cost” to taxpayers — might look “more like a Florida country club” than the White House, a nod to the planned ballroom’s eerie similarities to one the president has at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
She added that while presidents “technically have the authority” to make such changes, they traditionally run them past the National Capital Planning Commission.
A White House spokesperson told Axios that it looks to submit the ballroom plans to the NCPC “soon.” The NCPC oversees federal construction in Washington, D.C., but demolition isn’t in the agency’s purview, an NCPC spokesperson told the outlet.
Later in the segment, Whoopi Goldberg jumped in as Griffin pointed to Trump’s interest in “sweeping, huge” state dinners in the United Kingdom.
“But remind everybody where they’re having the sweeping — it’s in the castle, it’s Windsor Castle,” Goldberg said.
“You mean the king’s castle,” replied host Sunny Hostin.
“So that’s why he wants to build it,” Griffin continued.
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