Trump told Jesse Watters he’s building White House ballroom as a ‘monument’ to himself ‘because no one else will,’ host claims
Jesse Watters claims Donald Trump told him he is constructing the new White House ballroom as a “monument” to himself — and that he’s doing it “because no one else will.”
The Fox News host recounted the alleged conversation while speaking at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, a multiday conservative conference and festival in Phoenix, on Saturday, Dec. 20. A video of the moment has since been posted on X.
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https://people.com/jesse-watters-claims-trump-said-hes-building-white-house-ballroom-as-monument-to-himself-11874091Open linkView original on lemmy.world432
Comments100
LOL. No matter what happens in American politics, one thing is assured: when Trump is gone, and there's no longer any benefit to covering up his many crimes, he will be remembered as one of the worst people in history.
Didn't work for Ronnie Raygun. I'm still seeing stuff named after that asshole. Up until at least W, he was easily the worst president in living memory anyway.
That's not true at all.
It was an astrologist.
Ass-troll-ergist
I'd take them over Trump any day!
I don't believe in the "great man" theory of history, but an awful lot of bullshit does seem to line up with that one guy
The conservative wrecking ball that led to where we are now really starting swinging under Ronnie Raygun. Of course, it wasn't just due to him, but those around him.
He also had the most criminal administration, going by the number of criminal indictments in his admin. We'll see where Taco lands, I guess.
Was Ronnie hiding a trove of sexual assault evidence because I feel that is going to make a huge difference.
He also wasn’t profiting off his office nor helping his donors stay above the law. And his violations of human rights were at least outside the country, instead of also against his own people
Reagan may have started this huge swing to the right, to authoritarianism, but I seriously doubt he’d recognize how far it’s gone. And he would seem entirely centrist , relative to the current travesty
Fair. Even some of the most low-info geniuses that bought tons of Taco merch might finally turn on him (or at least hide/burn all their Nazi regalia) if it finally sinks in that most people don't like pedos.
That's an if. Their crutch is fake news like Faux. If they can prop up the notion that Taco being a pedo is "fake news", they might cling to him like bitter old cons hung onto Nixon...
I see that working short term but once Trump is dead, there is less value in propping up a pedo. He actually becomes very convient scape goat
"He was maga, but he wasn't maga enough."
Just like conservatism and Republicanism can never really fail, it's just that people fail conservativism/Republicanism. According to conservatives/Republicans. Ironically enough, they parrot the attitudes of Communists, LOL.
It will be the same when it comes to "maga" (which is just more of the same conservative/Republican pile of shit with a dumb acronym attached and the racism more blatant.).
I'm remembering him like that right now.
i already remember him like that
One can only hope.
... and knowing America's track record for stupidity .... THE WORST PRESIDENT SO FAR!
Fr. Imagine a competent, evil politician.
Depends who writes the history. The cultists will never abandon him.
You may be right, but that seems unlikely in the digital age.
With other supreme leaders / authoritarians, they've either lived at a time when evidence was physical documents which can be destroyed, or their crimes were committed at a time when they already had a tight grip on the populace and could disappear people for saying the wrong thing.
Once Trump is dead, all the people presently keeping quiet will no longer have any reason to do so. All these assholes seemed to work on mutual blackmail. You can see this with Epstein, now that he's dead all the blackmail he collected can be shared because there can't be any reprisal.
Additionally, in the current age, history does have many forms and many authors, many of whom are not at risk of being punished by American law.
There's tons of misinformation and hero worship that takes place in spite of easily available evidence to the contrary. If you control the narrative effectively enough no one will even question it enough to seek out that information.
Yes but my point is, there will no longer be an incentive to suppress negative information about him.
There must be so many people with evidence and testimony that could really harm him, but they won't release it or do anything with it for fear of reprisal.
It might take all the assholes that voted for him dying too.
Well, I'll be damned. He actually got something right.
He's also right about the fact that smart people don't like him and about the fact that he shouldn't be president if he's not as talented as Jimmy Kimmel
I miss the days when it was taken for granted that our presidents would be as talented as David Letterman at a minimum. We had standards back then.
I highly doubt it's finished at the end of his term.
It might not be a pile of rubble, but if there's anything there it's going to be flimsy cardboard not up to code and needs to be torn down anyways.
I hope he's alive to see it torn down.
Vote for me. My only campaign promises are to undo as much of what trump did, and my second campaign promise is "bacon". No I will not elaborate in any way on the second campaign promise. No more questions please! Goodnight everybody!
You've got my vote on both of those things
I’ll vote for you in the hope there will be affordable eggs with that bacon
What about "transgender for everyone"
I'm torn between that and just wanting him dead asap.
With his weight and age? May be sooner than you think.
Instead of being President he is busy building monuments to himself. Garbage administration.
What has he ever done that shows he has any desire (or ability) to lead?
But he was such a good leader on that reality TV show!
I hope everything gets reversed when he’s gone. The illegal renaming of the Kennedy center, the ballroom, the gold refinishing of everything, the departments, “supreme court”, etc, etc. I just wish they had enough balls to stop them from doing illegal sh before they did it.
They don't even have the balls to fix it after he's gone!! You had four fucking years to address the massive failures of rule of law baked right into your country and "y'all" did fucking NOTHING.
Nah they’ll rename it. They won’t fix anything substantial. But a rename, that’s easily within their wheelhouse.
Reagan's bullshit wasn't reversed under Clinton. Bush's bullshit wasn't reversed under Obama. Trump's first-term bullshit wasn't reversed under Biden. America just keeps going further and further down the toilet. The only option for the rest of humanity is to keep America's collapse contained.
Nice generalizations. But if you can’t list anything specific that’s as petty as the Trump-Epstein center or the Trump-Epstein ballroom or the gulf of Epstein, or come up with as huge a list as we can for the current administration, your attempt at “both sides same” falls flat.
Like it or not the current administration is historical. The flood of bs is unprecedented. The self-aggrandizement and profiting off the government has never been done by any party at any level approaching what we see today.
That isn’t what they were saying at all. The first person said they hoped that the bad shit would be undone by the next adminstration and the person you responded to mentioned past examples where new administrations did not do a lot, if anything, to undo awful policy. They didn’t say that the Democrats were just as bad but they rightly pointed out that said party doesn’t really put a lot of effort into fixing what was broken.
Dude, take off the blinders. Everything he said was factual. Your reaction to it is something you should reflect on.
Who needs tax dollars when you can just waste it on vanity projects
at the end of the day that is tax dollars.
What a peek behind the curtain. He feels alone and unloved. He has the most rabid fans and people flattering him constantly and he feels none of it. I'd pity him if I didn't loathe him so much.
Probably because none of his family likes him and he doesn’t really like them. And now he’s dying.
Is he going to have maga at his bedside? He’s going to die alone and the moment he’s dead everyone is going to turn on him.
I’ve been a salesmen in some fashion my entire life.
Trump is a salesman, not the best, not the smartest… but that has always been his game. He’s selling the idea of himself and he sold it to nearly half the population of the country.
The idea… of who he is… trump…
No one can walk in and take a shred of that power. Not even his kids with the trump name.
He sold the idea of himself and that’s what people bought. They aren’t going to say “and now jd Vance!”
I have no doubt maga will rally behind another but I don’t think anyone can predict who. And it will just be what’s left of the die hard cultist not the Republican Party itself.
The power dissolves when trump goes away.
They support him. That’s the product they bought.
Anyone can be sucked into a cult.
Racism is a sign low intelligence.
Intelligent people can be tricked and walked down a road into crazy.
I’ve tried to save so of my friends from q- anon. “You want adrenichrome? I can buy it for you online right now, ship it to your door! No one is harvesting children for it, it’s widely available and doesn’t make you immortal!!!”
I’ve seen smart people devolve. That’s the real shame. Stupid people do stupid things. Trump made a lot of smart people stupid as well. Which isn’t good for anyone.
There’s a good documentary called “the brainwashing of my father” or something like that. It’s very good.
You tapped into things I’ve thought about a lot. Being a salesman, being interested in cults and history (shout out to behind the bastards)
We a rationalizing machines not thinking machines. We have a hunch instantaneously and tend to fight to protect that hunch even when proven wrong. It’s a real problem.
My father went from making videos about the homeless needing help to “a million immigrants a day cross the boarder!!!!”
It was tragic to see him fall. He died a a couple years ago. I rember him as the good man he used to be.
It'll be whoever they put in front of them. They have controlling his base down to a science. Whoever Fox and OANN tells them to vote for. They's say that whoever the competition is wants to take their houses, eat their food and educate their kids and they will never question any of it.
It’s not that easy.
First trump isn’t going to support anyone who comes after, he’s too selfish.
So the party will be picking alone without his support.
The thing is big money might run things if they could “just pick someone” they would’ve done this decades ago.
Again I refuse to compliment trump. He was a mediocre salesman and he “scratched an itch” enough people had. You can’t just throw a dart and replace him with who it hits.
People won’t buy that product.
Tag this one, i'd be more than happy to eat crow after the next election. Things aren't going to go down they way the did in 'precedented' times.
If I’m wrong crows probally going to be all us peasants can eat. If I’m right I’ll hug you not expect you to eat crow.
I hope I’m not just being optimistic but I do believe I am right.
I think a big part of it is he's all their worst selves including being an absolute dupe. You get other politicians who are as vicious or shameless, but they feel like politicians. They were cutthroat climbers or people selling out to him. And they all kiss the ring. He would never kiss the ring but he's just as brainwashed by the propaganda machine as they are. He's just as obsessed with himself as they are.
Honestly the only one I've seen as virtueless as him is Erika Kirk
Oh people like him live the saddest lives imaginable. I personally know a narcissist nwith psychopathic tendencies and he actually acts a lot like trump, the midnight rants on how the world has wronged him, the weird "I cannot name a single person without immediately adding some judgement to it" like "Tom who is the greatest architect ever" and "Susan, that bitch"
He loves spending time and money on making others miserable, family included. Everything is a transaction, the guy knows no love, and gets none.
He controls his kids with money, sort of, but since the kids loathe him and can't wait to be independent and away from him, he'll lose them soon anyways. He always claims he is loved by hundreds even though nobody can stand being around him. His friends are bought as in these are people that are around whom because he pays them.
He has a clothes guy that sells him overpriced clothes, and he calls the guy a friend. The guy's literally around him only because he continuesly buys new clothes, multiple times per week
Nobody really knows how much money he has, he always claims everything is too expensive, and he constantly reminds everyone including his children on how much money he's spending on everyone and it's literally also the only one thing he has to give, the only thing he's good for: money. That is also what he'll be reminded for: money.
The life is legit sad and I'd feel bad for him if he wasnt such a giant asshole all the time to everyone. Fuck this asshole
Damn. I'd rather be broke and have friends than live like that for an hour.
oh gosh, now i'm wondering how my friends think of me. like, i'm unabashedly weird and enjoy it, but i have a little 3-second happy memory attached to people i care about in my brain kind of like a hype man, so if i'm telling a story and introduce a new character i can really quickly tell them who they are in three seconds. unfortunately my wife is "injustive to abbreviate" so she has to deal with that. fortunately she's there, so my friends don't have to deal with that in my storytelling. i'm probably "good in small doses" to them.
If you’re worried about what your friends think of you, then you are probably just fine.
Trump is sad and alone but he’s pretty sure it’s everyone else’s fault. Same with the above commenters friend .
If you took a second to consider you might be doing something wrong you are probably an alright person to hang around.
Does he though? Tons of maga online presence has been rooted out as being foreign based and a lot of the people at his rallies literally travel about following him like he's a shitty band.
You can't buy love.
He's not being self aware at all, he's just whining. It's a justification for a decision he's already made.
"We have to do it because nobody else will". That's probably the same logic he used to put his name on the Kennedy Center, or his picture on all of his buildings. Doesn't he want to put his face on a quarter? And Mt Rushmore? Seems to me we're being forced to memorialize him everywhere.
Can't wait for the inevitable trump face on Mt Rushmore, which will be immediately stopped the moment he croaked or step down (whichever comes first) so that all that's memorialized is a horribly disfigured face.
He's not stepping down. He's going to throw a fit in 2029 if he hasn't found a way to be officially a dictator without term limits.
He ain’t likely gonna live through this term. His shit is falling apart.
That’s always been his biggest skill - no shame about putting his name and face everywhere.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of us who will build a monument to him. A monumental shit on his grave.
If I knew where reagans grave was, I'd load up on fiber and spaghetti. I want it forcefully expelled from my bowels as an almost liquid consistancy. I want to spray it, so you can't really remove it. I want to power wash his grave with my butt juice.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4244/ronald-reagan
Normally I would say it's better to piss on his grave but apparently he's into those types of things. Don't want to resurrect him when he finally kicks the bucket now do we?
I will travel the days out to go and shit on it personally
I like the idea of a Trump statue as the Saddam Hussein statue news was very compelling when seeing it being toppled by it's citizens.
And just like Saddam's statue I hope a load of people descend on it to hit it with shoes.
How about a monumental guillotine?
How about a functional one
We could bait it with a gold plated bowl of veggies, call it a “peas prize”
I'm picturing something like that big mousetrap at the end of Fivel Goes West.
I did a massive monument to him in my toilet this morning. And I'll do another one tomoz.
i'm workin' on tomorrow's right now. adding some extra garlic
You've given me an idea....
Frankly, I’m incredulous. I simply don’t believe that Donald Trump is capable of being that self-aware.
Destroyed with next admin.
Would need to be completed for that
If only the DNC would nominate someone with the cajones to say that as a campaign promise.
If Trump gets to spend a year on a revenge tour, why can't we have someone go on a justice tour to clean up all the wrongs Trump has wrought?
I can’t believe any company would take the contract, given his reputation for not paying bills.
Companies can take out loans against projects on their books in order to finance delivery. And because banks are often run by people more greedy than careful, this opens an easy second hand swindle by which you claim yourself as a government contractor with a $300M project, borrow the balance at some percentage you don't care about, and then never pay it back.
Yeah, sure. Your name is burned. But for a healthy cut of a nine figure job, who cares? This ballroom is twice what the Ocean's Eleven team heisted, and it's all legal.
But they can sue the us government for violation of contract. As long as they do it after he leaves office they likely win.
Agreed. Although there's currently no plan in place because he can't get his shit together. So no contract yet, either.
Maybe Trump heard Lewis Black's bit about building "a big fucking thing". He's gonna build a ballroom restaurant, a ballroom hotel and casino, a ballroom SPA!
although, in Black's bit, he suggested using the construction of the big fucking thing to create jobs. Trump is trying to build a big fucking thing without paying people for it.
I'll build him a monument... well, it'd be more of an effigy, but close enough.
Might be the first true thing he's said. Ain't no one else gonna build monuments for him. Might be removing a few when he's out of office.
The ballroom is the cover for the data center underneath
It's a weird fetishization of the need for data. Like, we already have the NSA, which operates on the order of Zetabytes, nevermind the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the three letter agencies.
What is Trump going to do with a local data center that he couldn't already do through DOGE at any of the existing centers?
Did someone seriously sell him on installing the Singularity in his basement?
For those wondering about this comment, it has a reasonable basis, see this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbJ4ilDvGyc&pp=ygUZVHJ1bXAncyBiYWxscm9vbSBpcyBhIGxpZQ%3D%3D
I really hope it gets torn down within the next 3 administrations. That area of the lawn would be a pretty nice location for a sort of Garden. Perhaps a memorial garden dedicated to Obama or something.
I never seen a President so obsessed with himself than Trump.
Believe me, there will be monuments to Trump. Like being listed with Benedict Arnold and the Rosenbergs as one of the biggest traitors in American history.
Should have went with a pyramid; at least it has a function too(m). /s
you know what let Krasnov piss all over that city. when that dense motherfucker dies we should move the capital back to new york (specifically manhattan), let DC burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp
All the cocksuckers like Jesse will try to build monuments to this guy just like they did (and still try) for Ronnie Raygun.