The View hosts condemn Trump's new 'tacky, gaudy, nasty' White House ballroom: 'He's tearing down...

Alyssa Farrah Griffin noted that it all feels &34;very Marie Antoinette&34; given the current state of the country. The View hosts condemn Trump's new 'tacky, g

Alyssa Farrah Griffin noted that it all feels "very Marie Antoinette" given the current state of the country.

The View hosts condemn Trump's new 'tacky, gaudy, nasty' White House ballroom: 'He's tearing down the people's house'

Alyssa Farrah Griffin noted that it all feels "very Marie Antoinette" given the current state of the country.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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October 21, 2025 1:13 p.m. ET

Donald Trump; Sunny Hostin on 'The View'. Credit:

Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty; ABC

The ladies of *The View* are slamming President Donald Trump's "tacky, gaudy, nasty" new White House ballroom after construction began on it this week.

The expansion, which is funded by private donors, has already had a physical impact on the facade of the White House, demolishing part of the East Wing despite Trump's claim that it would be a separate building and not harm the current structure.

"That is not your building. You don't own that building!" Whoopi Goldberg emphasized on Tuesday's episode. "That would be like me going over to Trump Tower and saying, 'I'm gonna build a disco! They wanted to just own Trump Tower for hundreds of years!' I mean, come on, you don't own that building. That is the people's building. You don't own it!"

The White House's proposed Ballroom.

The White House

Joy Behar compared Trump to a "one man wrecking ball" when it came to his White House refurbishments.

"He pared the Rose Garden down so it looks like a cemetery and, at the same time, people are losing their government jobs," she said. "It's a very bad look right now to be building and demolishing and all this gold, tacky crap that he loves."

To Behar's point, Sara Haines added that she was particularly struck by the president's decision to build a ballroom given the current economic state of the country.

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"A ballroom is a symbol of excess and opulence, and we're living in a time where those optics just are flying in the face of the reality of the majority of this country," she said. "He won on making cost of living better, but inflation's up three percent. 74 percent of Americans say they've seen household prices increase by at least $100. The unemployment rate is at a four-year high right now. People are struggling to eat, and this is a wealthy ballroom paid for by wealthy people for wealthy people to come and dance."

While Haines acknowledged that the space is being constructed using private funding, she added, "I can't help but imagine how far $250 million could go for families who can't put food on the table."

Sunny Hostin was also fixated on its design. "People are losing their healthcare and tax breaks to billionaires who are probably some of the private donors for this tacky, gaudy, nasty ballroom," she said. When a picture of the proposed design and all of its golden accoutrements was projected onto the screen behind them, Hostin continued, "It's tacky! See! It looks like Mar-a-Lago, which is tacky."

She went on to describe the ballroom as a "metaphor for what's going on in our country," adding, "He's tearing down the people's house. He's an annihilist [sic]. He does seem to think that it's his house, that he is a king. I mean, just over the weekend, you have 7 million people [at the nationwide No Kings protest] telling him, 'That's not your house! You are not a king!'"

Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin on 'The View'.

Alyssa Farah Griffin did note that presidents "technically have the authority" to renovate the White House if they desire, but that updates would typically be run through a presidential planning commission so that they would "adhere to the architectural integrity" of the building.

"I have fears that this might look more like a Florida country club than the White House as we know it," she admitted. "This is what I will say in defense of him, but then let me finish my point before you interrupt: there is not a room in the White House right now that can host a giant state dinner."

Griffin noted that Trump has "cared since his first term" that he can't host large events like other countries. "If you go to the U.K. or something, you could have these sweeping, huge dinners," she said.

Goldberg then chimed in to remind the audience that those events are typically held at Windsor Castle in the U.K. "You mean the king's castle?" Hostin asked.

Still, Griffin fully agreed that the optics are bad. "Americans are struggling," she said. "The cost of living is not coming down. You have more unemployed Americans than we do jobs available right now. It feels very Marie Antoinette."

*The View* airs weekdays on ABC.

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