DL Open Thread: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
‘In Washington, Did Orange Don, His Stately Pleasure Dome Decree’. Construction begins on Trump’s oligarch-funded ballroom:
The facade of the East Wing of the White House came crumbling down on Monday as construction began on President Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a project that will transform one of the most recognizable buildings in the world and nearly double the size of the existing structure.
Having already changed so much about the way Washington works, he is increasingly changing the way Washington looks.
The East Wing was one of the last pieces of the White House complex he hadn’t yet started to make over in his own image. The Oval Office is dripping in gold and so is the Cabinet Room. The Rose Garden looks like Mar-a-Lago. There are massive flag poles in the backyard and in the front. He’s been tweaking the White House residence upstairs, too. He’s directing renovations at the Kennedy Center, and now he wants an Arc de Triomphe-style arch built on the other side of the Potomac.
There’s no telling just what this town might look like by the end of this term. But there will sure be a lot more to look at.
Last week, he hosted a dinner at the White House with dozens of corporate executives who agreed to help finance the ballroom’s construction. The money pouring in for it has sparked concerns from ethics experts who warn that it is just the latest way for the wealthy to buy access to the president. And what sorts of things might the ballroom actually be used for by this crypto billionaire president who has thrown dinners with his wealthiest memecoin holders?
President Trump hosted dozens of wealthy spenders for a dinner on Wednesday in exchange for what he called the “tremendous amounts of money” they agreed to donate to construct a $200 million ballroom addition to the White House, a project that has sparked concerns from ethics watchdogs.
More than three dozen corporate executives and wealthy businesspeople attended the dinner, where Mr. Trump expressed gratitude for their opening their checkbooks for his long-desired state ballroom. Representatives from companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin were in attendance.
So were wealthy supporters of Mr. Trump, like Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire oil and gas executive who bankrolled Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign and stands to benefit from his energy policies. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who run the crypto exchange Gemini and have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc., were also there.
Trump To Zelensky: Give up land or get obliterated:
U.S. President Donald Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to give up swaths of territory to Russia during a tense meeting on Friday that left the Ukrainian delegation disappointed, according to two people briefed on the discussion.
Trump also declined to provide Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine’s use, and mused about giving security guarantees to both Kyiv and Moscow, comments that the Ukrainian delegation found confusing, added the two sources, who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
In recent weeks, there had been indications Trump was deprioritizing efforts to force a deal on Kyiv and Moscow, in favor of throwing his full support behind the Ukrainians.
But the Friday meeting indicates that Trump may once again be pushing for a deal as quickly as possible, even if it is on terms that are unpalatable for Kyiv.
All it took was one call from Putin. A two-word conversation: ‘Pee tapes’.
Why ‘No Kings’ Resonates. I agree with Josh Marshall’s take on this. Highly-recommended:
The turnout and character of the weekend’s No Kings demonstrations speak for themselves and at great volume. But I wanted to say something about the naming and the focus of No Kings, which is emerging as something between a protest and a protest movement. It is a great good fortune for the country and the anti-Trump opposition that it has emerged in the way that it has, by which I mean the name itself, a deceptively resonant name and slogan with the deepest possible roots in American history. This brings with it a critical inclusivity, which grows out of the name itself and the lack of those specific and lengthy sets of demands that often characterize and ultimately fracture such movements.
The jagged and total nature of the onslaught against the American Republic creates a clarity: We all know what we’re talking about. You don’t need to explain. The imperfect but orderly and generally lawful old way versus this. And when you say “No Kings,” you’re saying I don’t want this. I don’t accept presidential despotism. I’m here ready to show my face and say publicly that I will never accept it.
That’s just a taste. Please read and, if you value Talking Points Memo, consider subscribing.
Cops Grope Penis. Admit it, you just have to click on this…I mean, they just can’t get enough of that penis.
Trump’s Model For ICE? Maricopa County’s Joe Arpaio:
The raid that ensnared Nieto Jr. and Meraz 17 years ago was carried out under a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that grants local police powers to check immigration status during traffic stops and other routine encounters. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, was among the first in the nation to test out ICE’s 287(g) task force program.
Since President Donald Trump retook office in January, similar scenes of local officers joining in aggressive immigration arrests have multiplied as ICE has rapidly expanded the 287(g) task force program to deputize local police officers as de facto deportation agents.
Moments after Manuel Nieto Sr. stormed out of his north Phoenix auto shop, the deputies left without arresting or citing his children. But Nieto Jr. and Meraz didn’t move on. They joined three other county residents in suing the sheriff’s office, accusing deputies of targeting them solely because they were Latino.
A federal judge agreed that the task force’s traffic stops and raids on Hispanic neighborhoods, day-labor centers and other businesses had violated Latinos’ civil and constitutional rights. Even after the ruling, the judge found Arpaio continued to detain people based solely on suspected civil immigration violations.
The U.S. Department of Justice also conducted a civil rights investigation into the sheriff’s office’s discriminatory practices, and ICE ended Arpaio’s 287(g) agreement. In 2012, ICE suspended all local police deportation task forces nationwide, only restarting them after Trump began his second term in January.
What do you want to talk about?
I hate to put a damper on everyone’s love of the “pee tapes,” but the initial report about the incident was that Trump had the hookers pee on the bed that Obama had slept in. That this report morphed into the hookers peeing on Trump says more about the imaginations of those speculating on it than anything else.
The odds are much stronger that the Epstein information/kompromat he doesn’t want coming out are his deep financial ties to hundreds of millions of dollars that Russian oligarchs siphoned out of the country and that Trump laundered for them through real estate purchases, the same issue that led to Trump and Epstein falling out.
Probably both. Trump has always been associated with the tackiest gold finishes and fixtures. It seems pretty on brand that a Trump residence would be incomplete without a golden shower.
Hold on, Maga said trump was writing a check out of his own personal account
The Silver Spring-based ACE Co. LLC is performing the demo work at the White House. They won an Associated Builders and Contractors award in 2021, so they are definitely not a union operation – which begs the question, on such a prominent job, where is the inflatable rat and the union reps posted up outside the gate? It seems like they tried to scrub their website of links showing their principle leadership, but they couldn’t scrub all of linkedin or the google cache. Robert Wilson runs the operation and is a UD poli-sci grad (quite a few other UD/delaware links among the team as well).
Give them a day or so. Remember, there wasn’t supposed to be any demo work at the White House.
Jan. 6 Rioter Arrested For Threatening To Kill Jeffries. Yes, Trump had pardoned him:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/21/jan-6-rioter-charged-hakeem-jeffries-00616481
While No Kings events are a step in the right direction, they are rallies, not protests.
Trump is a symptom of the system to which both parties are party. We will not stop this chain of events unless we disrupt the system and hit the rich and powerful where it hurts: their money and power. Mutual aid, a general strike (a la Italy), boycotting companies that cause harm all over the world, and actual disruptive protests (interrupt commerce, daily life, etc.) are the way forward, as is community building. If we don’t “want this,” then our work is to fight the root of the problem, not just the symptoms. We can’t let this momentum go to waste.
Ala Charles Cauley’s weekend demolition of the Alpine a couple of decades ago.