Trump’s East Wing Ballroom and Obama’s Presidential Center

There’s an interesting juxtaposition of these two building projects: President Trump champions a neo-Classical ballroom and Obama is delayed on his presidential center “Death Star.”

Democrats: “President Trump’s ballroom at the White House is going to look horrible!”

Also Democrats: “Barack Obama’s Presidential library looks great!” pic.twitter.com/u985RKU6zm

— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) October 26, 2025

Ross Douthat, in a column titled: “Better Trump’s Ballroom than Obama’s Tower”: The controversial public building is ugly and intimidating, architectural vainglory battening on presidential ego, inappropriate to its setting, unmoored from memory and tradition. I’m talking, naturally, about Barack Obama’s unfinished presidential center, currently looming like a Star Wars barracks over the residents of Chicago’s South Side. And then, on the new ballroom: The general design of the Trump ballroom — if you look at the actual sketches, not the social-media caricatures — is perfectly in keeping with the character of the White House complex, and if there’s any place where a cautious classicalism is appropriate, it’s at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So in the end Trump’s architectural legacy will probably be a useful building, built expeditiously, that looks, if not dazzling, at least appropriate, pleasing, fine (New York Times).

Albert Mohler finds the neo-Classical design very fitting: I think George Washington and his colleagues in the Revolutionary and in the Founding era got it right. The United States only exists in continuity with the achievements of classical civilization. And what the American Founding Fathers wanted to say is that, “we are the result of the logic of that Western civilizational commitment.” The last thing we need to do is to build federal buildings that try to take things in a very different direction (Mohler).