Joe Scarborough Slams GOP Push for $400M Trump Ballroom Funding After WHCA Shooting

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough sharply criticized Senate Republicans on Tuesday for pushing legislation to publicly fund a paused White House ballroom for President Donald Trump, calling their argument a “false choice

“This is preposterous,” Scarborough said during a segment on Morning Joe. “They’re saying, ‘We need this ballroom because things have gotten so dangerous out there.’ They have. I’ve expressed concerns. [Co-host] Mika [Brzezinski] and I have said time and time again, it’s preposterous and they can never again have so many cabinet members … in one place that is not as secured as the United States Capitol.”

The comments follow South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposal to allocate $400 million in taxpayer funding to construct Trump’s ballroom. Scarborough mocked the project as the “Marie Antoinette ballroom” and argued that the solution to security concerns after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner is finding more secure venues for such events.

“I’m not going to go into the details of all the things that Iran could have done [this past weekend],” Scarborough explained. “It doesn’t take an imagination to figure that out, but it would have been very easy to do. So they cannot go back to the Hilton. It is a national security risk. That said, building the Marie Antoinette ballroom is not the reaction to that [for] keeping things more secure. You have to find better locations.”

Scarborough also questioned the White House’s decision to reduce security at the WHCA dinner, citing a Washington Post report that suggested security was intentionally scaled back. He referenced the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, adding, “We’re at a stage now where the stakes are so much higher, especially after all of the blunders in Butler, PA, which I must say still baffle me.”

“All of these Republicans blindly following the talking points the White House put out right after the shooting is really a bit insulting,” Scarborough continued. “Yes, we need the president safe. We need the president secure. That does not mean we need to blindly throw taxpayer money at this time at one of the president’s pet projects.”

Jonathan Lemire, co-host of Morning Joe, added that the WHCA dinner would never be held in Trump’s proposed ballroom, even if it existed. “Even if the ballroom existed now, the White House Correspondents’ dinner would not be there,” Lemire said. “It is not a White House event. It’s a different organization.”

Scarborough further dismantled the GOP’s logic, stating, “This Republican idea that somehow Donald Trump is going to be like a king, they’re going to build a ballroom and he will be forever secure, is just nonsense.”