WASHINGTON — President Trump confirmed Sunday that a “massive” military complex is being built under his vaunted White House ballroom, providing new details on the secret project that was exposed in a recent lawsuit.
The White House ballroom is set to sit over the “doomsday” nuclear bunker that was built in the 1940s to keep presidents safe in times of war.
“Now, the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” Trump groused to reporters aboard Air Force One.
“But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction, and we’re doing very well,” Trump went on. “We have all bullet-proof glass, we have drone-proof roofs, ceilings.”
“Unfortunately, we’re living in an age when that’s a good thing.”
Renovations on the White House nuclear bunker, formally known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, had been an open secret, though many specific details of the work have been kept hidden.
The nuclear bunker had been placed under the East Wing, which Trump demolished last year to make way for his vaunted $400 million ballroom. The bunker has been modernized numerous times in the decades since.
Last year, the Secret Service had warned in court documents that efforts to halt construction of the White House ballroom would pose national security concerns, something that was widely interpreted as referencing construction on the nuclear bunker.
Trump has long described his ballroom as “impenetrable,” designed to be drone-proof and built with bulletproof glass.
On Sunday, during his trip from Florida back to DC, Trump also unveiled the most recent designs for his ballroom project, seemingly provoked by a scathing New York Times deep dive into the schematics, panning it for being overly large, featuring stairs to “nowhere,” and having columns that obstruct the view.
The president showcased new renditions of the ballroom project that he claimed were just created earlier that day to show how much of the design has changed.
“I think it will be the finest ballroom of its kind anywhere in the world,” Trump contended. “A lot of people are giving it really good reviews. Some are giving good reviews without even seeing the building, because this just came out today.”
“It’s become really beautiful, but it matches and fits the White House. It’s also capable of handling the inauguration,” he added.
Trump also swiped at the New York Times for being out of date in its analysis of his vaunted ballroom project.
“I think The Times wrote, gee, some of the windows are fake. We have no fake windows. They said they talked about a stairway in the South. We don’t have a stairway in the South. That was replaced a long time ago,” he jabbed.
