Donald Trump's attempt to exploit Saturday's assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner to build support for his controversial and unpopular $400 million ballroom addition has failed to move the needle, with the Washington Post reporting that voters remain "unmoved."
Despite a full court press by the president and his allies to use the dinner chaos to change voters' minds, new polling cited by the Post revealed that 56 percent of Americans still oppose Trump's plan to replace the torn-down East Wing for his privately-funded ballroom, while just 28 percent support it.
The opposition runs deep. Nearly three times as many Americans "strongly" oppose the project as strongly support it — revealing a stark enthusiasm gap that no amount of crisis exploitation can overcome, reports the Post.
Trump and his GOP allies attempted to capitalize on the shooting incident, circulating legislation this week to either authorize the project or funnel taxpayer money into construction, arguing that a secure ballroom is essential for protecting the president, but the strategy went nowhere. While Republican support did tick upward slightly — from 62 percent to 72 percent among GOP voters — there was no meaningful shift in overall public support for the project.
Case in point: Tamara Snyder, a Florida independent who leans Republican, was blunt in her assessment: "The ballroom is frivolous, in my opinion." She also praised the historic preservationists fighting to stop construction. "I'm 100 percent backing them and what they're doing," she said.
The ballroom has consumed Trump's second term in alarming ways. He mentions the project more frequently than policy priorities his advisers have urged him to champion ahead of the midterms — including his TrumpRx drug-pricing website. Administration officials have confirmed that Trump "has micromanaged every detail of the renovation," the Post report notes.
