MAGA Settles On a Message After WHCD Shooting: ‘We Need the Ballroom’

It only took minutes after a gunman attempted to storm into the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner for the president and his most fervent supporters to settle on a message: This is why construction must immediately resume on the 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom that President Donald Trump had torn down the East Wing to accommodate.

“It’s not a particularly secure building, and I didn’t want to say this,” Trump said of the Washington Hilton within the first few minutes of an impromptu press conference at the White House after being evacuated from the dinner Saturday night, “but we need the ballroom. That’s why Secret Service, and the military, are demanding it.”

He followed the statement with a lengthy post on Truth Social demanding that a federal judge lift his order that paused construction of the structure until the White House gets congressional approval for the project.

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump wrote, just before echoing the message in an interview on Fox News. “It cannot be built fast enough!”

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By Sunday morning, the message had been shared across social media by hundreds of the president’s most ardent supporters.

“I don’t want to hear one more fucking criticism of Trump’s new ballroom at the White House,” conservative commentator Meghan McCain wrote on X.

“We’d better never again hear a peep from anyone complaining about a White House ballroom,” Rep. Randy Fine added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, Rep. Tim Burchett, top Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon and dozens of conservative commentators and influencers all shared similar messages on social media and in interviews.

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman also said he had come around to the idea.

“After witnessing last night, drop the TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these,” he wrote on X.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is an annual event hosted by the independent association, which organizes coverage of the White House. Even if Trump’s White House ballroom were built, it’s not clear the dinner would be hosted there.

It has been hosted for years at the Washington Hilton, where on Saturday night an alleged gunman attempted to breach the security perimeter in what authorities have described as an attack on high-level government officials.

Authorities identified the man as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, and said he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Washington and checked into the hotel several days prior to the event.

He was carrying a shotgun, a handgun and several knives when he sprinted through a metal detector and engaged with Secret Service agents operating the security checkpoint, D.C.'s interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said at a news conference Saturday night.

It remains unclear whether Allen personally fired any shots. He was apprehended shortly after.

According to a White House official who spoke with NOTUS, the California native sent his family a “manifesto” just minutes before the shooting broke out. He also posted “a ton of anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric” on his social media accounts, the official said.

At a press conference shortly after being evacuated back to the White House, Trump revealed that one Secret Service agent had been injured in the attack when he was struck by a bullet in his tactical vest — though Trump said the man was doing “great.” Authorities said he was released from the hospital Sunday morning.

Lawyers for Trump have already argued in court that the new structure must be allowed to resume construction due to national security concerns. The lawsuit was filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation last year after Trump, without publicly announcing the scope of the project, ordered the demolition of the entire East Wing.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled last month that the national security concerns cited by the administration did not present enough of an imminent threat to require the executive branch to circumvent Congress’ authority over federal property and any major renovation projects.

“The American people will benefit from the branches of Government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles. Not a bad outcome, that!” he wrote in his opinion.

“While I take seriously the Government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House grounds and the President himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making!” Leon added.