9 August—Nobody seems too concerned that Donald Trump wants to add a formal ballroom to the White House and that work will start next month. Trump promises that he and his pals will be footing the bill, after all. And Trump never lies. Evidently nobody cares that the pretty classy executive mansion has done without an extravagant ballroom for over two centuries. The East Room has served the purpose when called upon, so why bother?

Even a number of Trump’s severest critics tend to dismiss a dedicated ballroom attached to the hitherto tasteful White House as no more than another manifestation of Trump’s well-known tackiness—and that’s not taking into account the details of the project, which have not been revealed but which likely will include gold and tasteless glitz coming out the ying-yang and a disco ball.

But it’s self-serving, self-dealing Donald Trump, so you just know the White House ballroom is intended to benefit him rather than the country. Question is, how? Easy. And pretty obvious when you think about it. Right after the East Wing is demolished and the Glitz Tacky Ballroom dropped in its place in record time, while he’s still embarrassing the country as president, using one of his notoriously self-serving executive orders Trump will declare the White House and the 18 acres of the most prime D.C. real estate it sits on superfluous, surplus, unneeded, a waste of taxpayer money to maintain.

So Trump’s executive order will go on to claim that he’ll be doing the nation a great favor by taking the White House off the taxpayers’ hands. Shades of DOGE. He may even offer to pay a token price for it just to show how mighty white he is. But of course he won’t follow through with the scratch.

You can bet that the wrong-headed majority of the Supreme Court—including the two clearly corrupt justices—that’s made Trump into an actual (as opposed to virtual) tyrant above the law, will back Trump’s White House acquisition on the ground that he’d be doing his duty as president.

We shouldn’t want to speculate on what Trump would do with the White House once it fell under his private control. But judging by what he’s done to insult and subvert other properties he’s been able to get his hands on, it’s nothing to look forward to. Don’t be surprised if the White House were to become a casino. The ballroom could easily be filled with card and roulette tables, for instance, and the potential for all the other rooms is mind-blowing. The Trump White House Casino would likely go belly up, but then Trump would simply declare bankruptcy and screw even more people . . .