President Trump let slip Sunday what officials have been tight-lipped about for months: the military is deep into construction on a massive underground complex directly beneath the new White House ballroom.
He broke the news himself to reporters on Air Force One.
“Now the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed, but the military’s building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction and we’re doing very well,” Trump said, describing the ballroom as a “shed.” He added, “We have all bullet-proof glass, we have drone-proof roofs, ceilings.”
“Unfortunately, we’re living in an age when that’s a good thing,” he noted.
“I think it will be the finest ballroom of its kind anywhere in the world,” Trump further stated. He went after specific claims in a story from the New York Times, saying: “They said the windows are fake. We have no fake windows. They said they talked about a stairway in the South. We don’t have a stairway in the South. That was replaced a long time ago.”
The underground facility sits atop the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a nuclear bunker that’s been there since the 1940s. When Trump tore down the old East Wing last year to build his $400 million ballroom, the bunker moved with the project. The facility has been upgraded repeatedly over the decades, and this round appears to be the most significant expansion yet.
The Secret Service told a federal court back in 2025 that stopping ballroom construction would create “substantial” national security concerns.
