Always lying, always cheating. The arrangement that the Malignant Fascist made to secretly use taxpayer money in a sweetheart no-bid deal to construct his golden ballroom/ bunker is out in the open now:
Donald Trump used a secret backroom arrangement to ensure the deal to build his tacky East Wing ballroom went to his preferred contractor.
Officials steered the $500 million agreement with Clark Construction through the Executive Residence, an arm of the Executive Office of the President that ordinarily buys furniture and art, covers entertainment, and handles repairs at the mansion, according to The Washington Post ($$).
That office sits outside federal rules that require agencies to seek competing offers and to lay out spending publicly. Structuring the deal this way allowed Trump to dodge scrutiny of the arrangement and avoid exposing it to competition.
Avoiding competition allowed the administration to sidestep a process that has historically worked to keep prices down for a job of this scale, the Post reported. “I would certainly expect them to compete a project of this size and complexity,” Anthony Costa, a former General Services Administration official who handled federal real estate work across four administrations, told the Post.
Trump, 80, got personally involved in the haggling, records show. On March 4—days after launching his war with Iran—he talked down what a Clark subsidiary would charge for concrete, trimming $2.3 million from an opening figure above $47 million.
The price tag has more than tripled since the ballroom was unveiled in July, with taxpayers expected to foot roughly half of it. The company internally valued the work at $200 million in July 2025, a figure that has since ballooned to $600 million.
Trump insisted donors would cover the bill. He told The New York Times in January that Clark had offered to do the work for free. “They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor’,” he said. *
The Virginia firm, the largest builder in the D.C. region, stands to profit handsomely. A March estimate put its haul at $65 million across overhead, profit, and on-site staffing.
Clark also flagged plans to pass demolition, excavation, and other tasks to 11 or more subcontractors without competition, two of them in-house subsidiaries...
Will we find out in the future what profit the Malignant Fascist also made in the deal? Also, to repeat, a taxpayer-funded golden ballroom/ bunker for me, no affordable housing for thee!
Any Democratic candidate for Federal office that doesn't pledge to demolish this monument to graft and greed (and everything else the MF touched) as a top priority gets a hard pass from us.
BONUS: More corruption here and here.
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* Any quote that the Malignant Fascist begins with "Sir" is guaranteed fictitious.
(Image: maybe no =yawn= housing bill, but this excites him / The White House)
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