President Donald Trump hosted donors of his planned White House ballroom with an extravagent dinner Wednesday night.
The gala was held in the East Room and included business leaders from healthcare, technology, and finance.
Major donors who attended included executives from Google, R.J. Reynolds, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir, as well as Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone Group, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“Chief executives throughout history have contributed to making the White House special, and nothing of this magnitude has been done,” Trump said to open the evening.
Private donors had pledged $200 million for the 90,000-square-foot project, to be called the Donald J. Trump Ballroom in an expansion to the East Wing.
Unveiled this past July, it will seat up to 650 people for formal events, far exceeding the East Room’s capacity of about 200.
The dinner was called the “Establish the Magnificent White House Ballroom,” according to invitations reviewed by the Journal.
“We have a lot of legends in the room tonight, and that’s why we’re here to celebrate you, because you gave … tremendous amounts of money to see a ballroom for the first time at the White House,” Trump said.
Early in his remarks, the president drew back the East Room curtains to reveal the site where the new ballroom will be built.
“The White House for 150 years-plus, they wanted to have a ballroom, and it never happened because they didn’t have a real estate person,” Trump added.
The ballroom is among several renovation projects Trump has initiated at the White House.
He paved over the Rose Garden lawn, redecorated the Oval Office, and unveiled renderings for a proposed arch near Arlington National Cemetery.
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