Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:
He is driving this effort behind the scenes.
This is something that he has been on a mission to have built all the way back at least until 2010. I spoke with David Axelrod, who was an adviser to then-President Obama. He got a call from Donald Trump, then just a man on the outside, offering initially to help with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you might remember.
Then, when that was solved, he called back and he said, hey, I can build ballrooms. You need a ballroom. These tents are no good. Typically, state dinners have been held in tents because the largest event space at the White House is the East Room, and it only holds maybe about 200 people seated for dinner.
So Trump called and tried to get Axelrod to let him build a ballroom at the White House. That didn’t work out. Trump has never forgotten the slight. And over the last 15 years, he has talked about this repeatedly. We know now that in the last few months, he’s had a number of meetings to get this going.
And he has been very serious, and now it’s really happening.
