'Sell the White House too!' Trump mocked amid effort to sell government buildings

Critics mocked the Trump administration's latest effort Tuesday as it looks to sell or lease federal government buildings — including those housing employees of the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy.

On Monday, CoStar reported that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative "canceled about one in 10 active federal commercial real estate leases."

Now they want more.

PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins posted on X that the General Services Administration is looking at possible buildings that it can sell or lease given the mass federal purge. She posted the complete list of what they call "non-core properties."

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One is the FBI building, which comes after new head Kash Patel said on a podcast that one of the first things he would do was close it down and open a museum to the "deep state." He later told FBI officials that he wants 1,000 agents and 500 support staff to be moved into state field offices, The New York Times reported.

Other offices that the GSA said could close are the Department of Agriculture building, the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, the FAA, and the GSA headquarters itself.

It prompted comments from folks with other suggestions for other buildings that Republicans could shut down.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein asked, "Why stop there? Sell the White House too. Do we really need both the House AND the Senate? Let's get rid of one of those."

David Badish of the New Civil Rights Movement chided, "It was for sale, Putin bought it January 20."

Meteorologist Steven DiMartino posted a gif, predicting the "future owner of federal buildings being sold" would be a Spirit Halloween store.

"This list is insane. It even includes things like the GSA-run HEATING PLANT which ensures that federal buildings have steam heat and cold water," Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X.

"It really is just like the country has been taken over by a hostile foreign power so we're now picking fights with friends and dismantling state capacity," lamented Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias.

Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman pointed out that it's a considerable amount of Washington, D.C.'s downtown area.

Broadway lawyer Michael Salerno posted, "Guarantee some Trump shell company is going to buy these, and then will lease them back at much higher prices to the government."

Seattle Times reporter Patrick Malone joked, "Energy HQ will be a hard property to move. Looks like a concrete, Soviet honeycomb, is named after a suicidal bureaucrat. Likely haunted."

Craig Beam, a "mostly retired" former chair of the American Heart Association, replied that trying to sell government buildings has been a big problem for a while.

"GSA has been trying to sell the 'Ziggurat' building in Laguna Hills and has had two failed bid processes," he said referencing the Chet Holifield Federal Building. The "Government was requiring keeping the existing building that has been unoccupied for decades. Would require major $'s to bring up to current standards. Wonder how these will go?"