Trump Insists His Ballroom’s Ballooning Price Tag Is Totally Fine

President Donald Trump dismissed claims Wednesday that the White House ballroom has suffered cost overrun after its price tag skyrocketed from $400 million in private donations to $1 billion sourced from American taxpayers. 

Trump claimed that there was no cost overrun because he’d previously announced that the cost of construction had gone up. 

“The only reason the cost has changed is because, after deep rooted studies, it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal, which would not have been adequate to handle the necessary events, meetings, and even future Inaugurations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

“This was a necessary change, it was done long ago, but the Fake News failed to report it, trying to make it look like there was a cost overrun. Actually, it is coming in ahead of schedule, and under budget!” Trump added. 

Trump originally claimed that the project would only cost $200 million, but that number later ballooned to $300 million, and then $400 million after he decided to tack on extra construction. The ballroom had previously been paid for by private donors, many of whom held multi-figure federal contracts.  

Then, earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley requested $1 billion for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom’s construction. Trump is simply pretending the outrage is over the old price tag, and not the exorbitant one Senate Republicans hope to pass, which will come at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. 

Trump’s defense rings especially hollow, considering that the DOJ launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the cost of renovations to the Fed’s office buildings. The suit was a pretext to attack Powell as he tried to maintain the agency’s independence from the White House. 

In March, Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas for the criminal case against Powell, finding that the government has produced “essentially zero evidence” to substantiate its claims.

Mississippi Republicans plan to hold a vote to redraw the state’s congressional map in a building central to the legacy of segregation.

The special legislative session is scheduled to take place on May 20 in what is now known as the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, ostensibly due to renovations in the House chamber in the newer Capitol building. But the Old Capitol was the site of Mississippi’s vote to secede from the union over slavery in 1861, as well as the location where lawmakers met to establish the state’s 1890 constitution enshrining Jim Crow segregation against its Black population.

“I was a little taken aback with the location of the Old State Capitol,” Democratic state Representative Kabir Karriem, who heads Mississippi’s legislative Black caucus, told The Guardian. “Even though they said that they were doing some remodeling, the optics of it are horrific for 1.2 million Black folks here in the state of Mississippi.”

The redistricting vote is only possible because of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act set up to protect the voting rights of Black Americans across the South. The Supreme Court ruling removed protections against racial gerrymandering, allowing states like Mississippi to redraw their districts without any protections for Black voters.

The chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party, Cheikh Taylor, said the special session was about “power, and making sure Black Mississippians never have enough of it to threaten the people who currently hold it.”

“And now they plan to do it in the Old Capitol, the same building where Mississippi voted to secede from the Union over slavery, and where white supremacist delegates crafted the 1890 Constitution that stripped Black citizens of their voting rights and ushered in decades of poll taxes, literacy tests and racial terror,” Taylor, who is also a state representative, said in a statement. “Rep Kabir Karriem is right. It is a slap in the face to the 1.2 million African Americans in this state. It is also a confession. They are returning to the scene of the crime to try and finish the job.”

Republican-run states across the country are hastily moving to redraw their districts, not just because of the Supreme Court but also at President Trump’s urging as he attempts to avert a bloodbath for the GOP in November’s midterm elections. Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black people of any state in the U.S., at about 38 percent. Soon, they may not have a single member of Congress working in their interest.

Satellite imagery has revealed that Iranian airstrikes have done much more damage to U.S. military bases, fuel depots, barracks, and other outposts than the Trump administration is letting on—even as the president and his Cabinet claim to be winning the war.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that at least 228 structures at U.S. military sites in the Middle East have been either partially damaged or totally destroyed by Iran since the beginning of the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon. The Post reached this number by independently verifying satellite images released by Iranian state media.

The numbers are much higher than the Trump administration has publicly admitted, and the U.S. military has been forced to reduce staffing at many of the attacked sites.

“The Iranians have deliberately targeted accommodation buildings across multiple sites with the intent to inflict mass casualties,” image analyst William Goodhind told the Post. “It is not just equipment, fuel storage and air base infrastructure under fire, but also soft targets, such as gyms, food halls and accommodation.”

Seven U.S. service members have been killed in strikes and over 400 have been injured since the start of the war in February.

This reporting contradicts essentially everything Trump has said—and suggests that he severely underestimated Iran’s military capabilities before getting the country involved in another war in the Middle East.

The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation into the Atlantic reporter who reported on Kash Patel’s excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

The FBI’s probe is focused on journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick, who reported last month that Patel was known to drink in excess, routinely delayed meetings and time-sensitive operations, and was often unreachable, two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW Wednesday.

The probe is different from a typical leak investigation because it did not stem from a leak of classified information, and instead focuses on leaks to a reporter, the sources said.

“They know they are not supposed to do this,” one source told MS NOW. “But if they don’t go forward, they could lose their jobs. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

After The Atlantic published the story, Patel filed a $250 million defamation suit against the publication, claiming the article was “replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”

But if the claims are all false, then why investigate a leak?

This wouldn’t be the first time that Patel undermined his own lawsuit. Last month, Patel flatly denied something asserted in his own court filings. And Patel’s ongoing temper tantrum over the report has apparently only invited more government officials to reach out to Fitzpatrick.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the bureau was investigating Fitzpatrick. “This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists and the reporter you mention is not being investigated at all,” he told MS NOW.

“Every time there’s a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist,” he added.

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg gave a statement to MS NOW: “We will have further comment when we learn more. If true, this would be an outrageous, illegal, and dangerous attack on the free press and the First Amendment. We will defend Sarah and all of our reporters who are subjected to government harassment simply for pursuing the truth.”

This story has been updated.

Wannabe California governor Chad Bianco tried to pull a trump card during a GOP debate on CNN, and ended up humiliated on live TV.

During a prolonged exchange with host Kaitlan Collins, the MAGA-aligned Riverside County sheriff vehemently denied that he ever accused his Republican rival, GOP frontrunner Steve Hilton, of “swindling” his way into the Republican arena. But Collins had the receipts, and read them as Hilton stood just feet away.

“I saw the two of you chatting earlier, you and Mr. Hilton. You’ve actually had some harsh words for your fellow Republican,” Collins said. “You’ve called him ‘unethical and dishonest’ and said that he is trying to ‘manipulate Californians’ and ‘swindled his way into the Republican side.’ Are you saying that you don’t think Republican voters can trust Mr. Hilton?”

“I don’t know where that came from. I would tell you, in my entire life I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘swindle,’” Bianco said. “So I don’t know if you were quoting something or if you were saying that—if you were saying that.”

“It’s a quote from you to The Atlantic,” Collins clarified.

Hilton, a California businessman who previously worked for British Prime Minister David Cameron, has been endorsed by Donald Trump. He is currently tied in the polls with Democrat Xavier Becerra, pulling roughly 18 percent of the vote.

Bianco tried to qualify his language, and in doing so again denied having ever used the word “swindle.”

“I don’t know where that came from. I would never, I would never use the word ‘swindled,’” he stuttered.

He then claimed he was the only person on the stage whose job—as a local law enforcement official—revolved around the truth, noting that “right now, lying can get me removed from my job.”

But Collins offered more specifics, quoting directly from an interview that Bianco did with KBAK in March in which the sheriff asserted that Hilton was trying to figure out how he can “manipulate Californians to put him in this position at a time when we know that California Democrats have failed and we are going to vote for a Republican governor, and he has swindled his way into the Republican side, even though he’s not.”

“I probably did say that,” Bianco admitted. “I didn’t use the word ‘swindle’, whatever it was. But that context, I will agree with that 100 percent.”

“So you did say the quote?” Collins pressed.

“Sure,” Bianco said.

It would be a shocking turn of events if Bianco’s blustery performance did anything but hurt him at the polls. During the same debate, the 58-year-old touted his Oath Keeper alliance until one of his opponents, Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, reminded him that the extremist militia group participated in the January 6 insurrection.

“You’re an Oath Keeper. We all know that,” Villaraigosa said.

“And I’m very proud of it,” Bianco interjected.

“I don’t think an Oath Keeper is qualified to be governor,” Villaraigosa continued.

Bianco later said he had sworn an oath three times “to defend my Constitution.”

“To everyone who wants to lie and get emotionally spun up about the Oath Keeper organization, I want you to go read the mission statement—” Bianco continued, before he was interrupted by another voice on stage: “I saw them on CNN attacking the Capitol.”

“Do you still consider yourself a member of that group, to be clear?” asked Collins.

“No,” Bianco replied.