You’re Paying for President Trump’s Ballroom

Half the cost of President Trump’s $600 million ballroom will be placed on the shoulders of U.S. taxpayers like you. This development, based on financial records obtained by The Washington Post, comes just two months after Trump promised the project would be “taxpayer free,” with no U.S. citizen paying even “10 cents.”

The ballroom has already eclipsed the $400 million Trump originally said it would cost. And while Trump has defended the necessity of the ballroom profusely, it’s become abundantly clear that this is simply another vanity project for him to feel like he’s actually done something successful, even as there’s no real need or demand for the ballroom—especially not if Americans are paying for $300 million of its price. And the wealthy individuals who are actually paying for it are getting government contract kickbacks for doing so.

“I guess ‘privately funded’ meant Trump was keeping it private that he’s stealing hundreds of millions of the public’s money for his ballroom. All this while gutting health care and raising costs,” Democratic Representative Gabe Amo wrote on X. “Shame. We have to stop this grift.”

The Trump administration’s plan to approve $300 billion in aid for reconstructing Iran has only become more confusing.

Vice President JD Vance all but confirmed to CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Monday morning that the $300 billion was a real proposal in the Iran peace deal. Yet within hours—and after some monumental backlash from his party—Vance seemed to change his tune, telling Fox News’s Sean Hannity that Iran would not receive a “single dime” of U.S. money.

“The agreement says they are not getting a single dime of American money, that’s just not what this is,” Vance said Monday night. “What the agreement does say, Sean, is again, if the Iranians behave, and if there are sanctions relief, and if the Iranians are integrated into the world economy, we would invite other countries—not us—but other countries to invest in their country.

“That’s fine, but only if they comply with the terms of the agreement,” Vance added.

Vance did not elaborate on how the administration planned to manage or gatekeep foreign aid packages intended for Iran.

The White House and Tehran have already signed a peace deal, though the exact specifications of the agreement have not yet been revealed (and are still being hashed out). The final draft reportedly proposes the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz under Iran’s direction, a commitment from the U.S. not to interfere in Iranian affairs, and a reiteration of Iran’s commitment not to produce nuclear weapons, echoing language included in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to a senior Iranian official who spoke with Reuters.

The most contentious point of the plan, however, is a reported $300 billion reconstruction fund, as well as billions more in unfrozen Iranian assets and forfeited sanctions—which were originally understood to be provided at cost to U.S. taxpayers.

Donald Trump similarly tried to cast doubt on the proposal Monday evening, claiming on Truth Social that “the story that the U.S. is paying Iran 300 million Dollars is Fake News, put out by the Dumocrats!!!”

But not everyone in the administration is on the same page. Earlier that day, a U.S. official told reporters that the White House had “discussed the possibility of releasing frozen funds, sanctions relief, you know, a big $300 billion fund to rebuild their country, and all of these things are going to be tied to performance.”

President Trump is defending America’s tentative deal with Iran, claiming that the U.S. is not “investing any money.”

Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France Tuesday morning that unlike with 2015 JCPOA agreement with Iran, the U.S. was not transferring cash to Iran, ignoring the fact that reports of the still-unpublished deal include Iranian access to $300 billion in reconstruction funds and releasing $25 billion in Iranian assets.

“We’re not investing any money. We have the right to if we want, but we’re not investing any money. We didn’t pay for it like Obama did. He paid billions of dollars, he paid $1.7 billion from an airplane, all green cash. I watched that, I couldn’t believe it,” Trump said. “But the one that’s happening that’s of note, frankly the only thing that matters to me is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

The JCPOA also included a commitment from Iran that it would not pursue a nuclear weapon. Plus, it included the U.S. lifting sanctions and sending Iran $1.7 billion to settle decades-old failed contracts between the two countries. In Trump’s new deal, the funding sources for the $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran are unclear, although Vice President JD Vance said Monday that they would come from the “Gulf coast coalition.”

Is that some combination of Persian Gulf countries and the U.S., or did Vance actually mean to refer to the Gulf Cooperation Council? If some of that money does come from American taxpayers, that’s not going to go over well with most of Congress, except a few of Trump’s most sycophantic supporters.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others within the Trump administration don’t think Iran is being serious about its promise not to develop or attain nuclear weapons, according to anonymous sources from Axios.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Ratcliffe each voiced their doubts regarding Iran’s commitment to the memorandum of understanding announced on Sunday, as each detailed “intel” that led them to doubt Iran’s side of the MOU agreement.

“The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal,” one source told Axios.

While the full text of the deal has yet to be released, it is understood that the MOU requires that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days and refuse to develop nuclear weapons, while the U.S. must end its blockade of Iranian ships in the strait and Israel must withdraw from Lebanon. It’s important to note that the strait was already open before the war, and this commitment to no nukes from Iran was already in the original deal from 2015—a deal that Trump canceled in 2018.

It’s also not clear just how seriously Trump will take this “intel” from Rubio, Ratcliffe, and Hegseth, as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff are supportive of the MOU.

After nearly four grueling months, President Donald Trump is trying to end the war he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off in February—but neither Republicans nor Israeli officials are happy with the “Art of the Deal” guy’s dealmaking.

Trump gloated that a deal to end the war was complete on his 80th birthday on Sunday. “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” he wrote on Truth Social.

But despite the president’s insinuation that he had just created peace and opened a vital trade route with one social media post, the deal isn’t actually done. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Trump is actually hoping to open the Strait and finish his peace deal on Friday. Trump appropriately backtracked in comments to reporters. “Ships are starting to go out now, and on Friday it will be completely opened,” he said.

And Trump may still be promising a shorter timeline than he can actually achieve. Senior U.S. officials told reporters on Monday that it could take over two weeks for the strait to fully open. The officials also said the text of the deal between the U.S. and Iran would be released by Wednesday—Trump said he expected it to be released Friday.

But the inconsistent statements don’t end there. While the White House has been saying for weeks that Iran won’t get financial relief until it dismantles its nuclear capabilities, Trump said on Sunday that the nation will be allowed to export oil and open its ports immediately after the peace deal is signed. Iran has alleged the deal will give it a whopping $12 billion in relief before negotiations even begin, and that the U.S. has agreed to support reconstruction efforts worth $300 billion down the line. American officials have denied this.

Trump’s contradictory messaging, as well as his perceived reconciliation with Iran, has annoyed Netanyahu—one source told the Journal the Israeli leader is seeking a meeting with the president ASAP—and Republicans back home, who have criticized the president’s refusal to release the details of the peace deal he claims is complete.

“If you want people to stop speculating about the [Memorandum of Understanding], release the MOU,” Fox News host Mark Levin wrote on X. “Don’t brief a few anointed ones to control the narrative and expect everyone else to sit silently. That’s not how our country works.… Controlling the narrative can only last so long.”

The editors of National Review, a conservative magazine frequently critical of Trump, chimed in with an op-ed titled, “Release the Text of the Iran Deal,” lambasting the president for the disparities between his public statements and those from Iran.

“There is the possibility that Trump would return the U.S. to Obama’s failed Iran deal that Trump rightfully tore up in his first term, which would have all the makings of a humiliation after all of the president’s tough talk,” the piece reads.

No less than James Lindsay, an author and mathematician who made a name for himself posting far-right conspiracy theories on social media, called the agreement a “very bad deal built on a very fundamental misconception.”