WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that the new ballroom he’s adding to the White House campus will be larger than first described, with a capacity of 900 people.
In a brief telephone interview with NBC News, the president said: “We’re making it a little bigger. It will be top of the line, as good as it can get anywhere in the world.”
A White House statement in July showed that the ballroom would seat up to 650 people, meaning the planned capacity has grown by nearly 40%.
Trump has said the ballroom will fill an important need at a crowded White House, sparing foreign leaders and other dignitaries from traipsing out to tents set up on the South Lawn for dinners and receptions.
The White House has estimated the cost at $200 million. Trump reiterated in the interview that he will personally help pay for the addition. Private donors — “patriots,” as the White House has called them — are also expected to chip in.
A former real estate developer, Trump has taken a personal interest in the ballroom’s construction.
Work has already begun, as Trump noted to reporters gathered Friday on the South Lawn.
“Right there you see all the trucks,” he said. “They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.”
The ballroom represents the biggest change to the White House exterior since the East Wing was expanded under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. It will take the place of the East Wing, which has traditionally served as office space for the first lady and her staff.
Trump is coming off a fraught week in which he lost his friend and political ally Charlie Kirk in an assassination. On Tuesday, he is due to leave for England, where he and first lady Melania Trump will be the guests at a state banquet hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla at Windsor Castle.
Trump will be the first American president to have been invited for two state visits; his first took place in 2019 at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth, who died three years later.
“I look forward to saying hello to Charles and Camilla,” Trump told NBC News.
“It’s going to be incredible. It’s such a great honor.”
