https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/most-americans-oppose-east-wing-demolition-for-trump-ballroom-poll-finds/ar-AA1PurqA

Most Americans oppose East Wing demolition for Trump ballroom, poll finds

Story by Dan Diamond, Andrew Tran, Jonathan Edwards

Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom building by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday.

Twenty-eight percent of Americans say they support the demolition project, paid for by $300 million in private donations from U.S. businesses and individuals, compared with 56 percent who oppose it, the poll finds. Another 16 percent are not sure whether they support or oppose the project.

The findings echo other recent surveys, including an Economist-YouGov poll conducted from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27 that found 25 percent of Americans supported the project and 61 percent were opposed.

The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll also finds partisan splits in how Americans perceive the project, with nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and roughly 6 in 10 independents opposing it, compared with about 2 in 10 Republicans. However, Democrats feel more intensely about the issue than Republicans. Some 78 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents strongly oppose the project, compared with 35 percent of Republicans who strongly support it.

Trump has claimed the project is broadly popular.

“People are loving it,” the president said in remarks in Tokyo on Tuesday, citing an editorial in The Washington Post and an op-ed in the New York Times that supported his project. (The Washington Post’s editorial page is independent from the newsroom.)

The construction project, which the White House announced in July, drew widespread attention last week after demolition began. Preservationists have blasted the administration for tearing down a historic structure with little oversight, and watchdog groups have questioned Trump’s use of private donors to fund a pet project.

“There are huge transparency and conflict-of-interest concerns here,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of policy and government affairs at the nonpartisan Project of Government Oversight.

Lawmakers and some conservative commentators have also criticized Trump for demolishing part of the White House without waiting for federal review boards to weigh in.

The administration has defended the project, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other officials saying that a larger event space is a long-needed addition to the White House that Trump has found a way to build without tax dollars.

Trump is in the process of installing allies on federal boards expected to review and potentially approve his ballroom plans. The project’s projected cost and scope have grown over time. The White House originally said the addition would hold about 650 people and cost $200 million — estimates that have grown to roughly 1,000 people and $300 million. Trump says he has raised roughly $350 million.

Donors to the project include companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Palantir, and wealthy individuals such as Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman and crypto investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, according to the White House. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post)

White House construction projects can be controversial in the moment, but they generally become accepted over time, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian. He cited examples such as President Harry S. Truman’s renovation of the White House in the late 1940s, which provoked criticism from conservationists and sparked a showdown with federal arts commissioners.

“The American people don’t like change, and when they see these changes, they are often uncomfortable with them,” said Troy, who worked in the White House during the George W. Bush administration.

Troy added that the abrupt nature of Trump’s project may be fueling some criticism. Unlike Trump, Truman worked with Congress to appropriate funds for White House construction and create a bipartisan commission to oversee it. The Truman-era renovations were also accompanied by engineers’ warnings that the White House was structurally weak and in danger of collapse.

“Presidents don’t usually rush into doing these types of construction projects,” Troy said.

The controversy has energized Democrats, who have opened probes into the ballroom’s donors and begun fundraising off the project — in some cases, misrepresenting Leavitt’s recent comment that the ballroom was Trump’s “top priority.” Leavitt was responding to a question about Trump’s planned renovation projects.

“Let’s be clear: Trump’s not just wasting money, he’s sending a message: No health care for you. A ballroom for him,” read a message sent Monday by the campaign of Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), comparing Trump’s focus on the ballroom to the ongoing government shutdown.

Some Democrats said they have been surprised by the reaction to Trump’s demolition of the East Wing and construction of his ballroom, contrasting it with the administration’s efforts to cut Medicaid payments, impose tariffs that have raised prices on common consumer goods and other moves that they said were arguably more important to average voters.

“It broke through in a way I hadn’t anticipated,” said Jon Favreau, a co-host of “Pod Save America,” a popular left-leaning podcast. Favreau added that there were more salient issues than White House construction: “I guess that doesn’t matter as much if it grabs people’s attention and becomes a data point in a larger argument about Trump acting like a corrupt third-world dictator.”

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted online Oct. 24 through Oct. 28 among 2,725 U.S. adults. The sample was drawn through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an ongoing panel of U.S. households recruited by mail using random sampling methods. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.