Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are so desperate to get into Trump's good books they have fronted up with cash.

The proposed ballroom will span 90,000 sq ft and the President has stated the project will cost “about $300 million” (roughly €280 million), although the administration had earlier floated a budget of $200 million (€185 million).

Allegedly, the ballroom will be funded by Trump and private donors. He has repeatedly said the work will not be funded by taxpayer money.

According to CNN, the donor list includes companies such as Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar Inc., Coinbase, Comcast Corporation, Hard Rock International, Google, HP, Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Micron Technology, Microsoft, NextEra Energy, Palantir Technologies, Ripple, Reynolds American, T‑Mobile, Tether America and Union Pacific Railroad.

The move is not terribly surprising. Companies like Apple have found themselves making increasingly elaborate gestures to the Trump administration in an effort to curry favour and avoid punitive action. In August, Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted Trump a glass‑and‑gold commemorative plaque. To take it a step further, the plaque, including the box it arrived in, was all made in America (which was more than could be said for other Apple products).

So far, the project has done more damage the White House since the British and Canadians burnt the whole lot to the ground in 1812. Yesterday it was revealed that the historic White House movie theatre had been demolished.

The White House first added its storied screening room during the fourth term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942, when the East Terrace's cloakroom was converted into a theatre. In subsequent years, numerous presidents screened dozens of movies each. Dwight D. Eisenhower installed plush armchairs in the theatre's front row and watched High Noon there, while John F. Kennedy watched the James Bond flick From Russia With Love the night before his assassination in 1963.

Later, Richard Nixon screened movies like The Sound of Music, Citizen Kane, and The Sting during his tenure while Jimmy Carter played over 400 movies in his single term in office, kicking off his presidency with the anti-Nixon journalism thriller All the President's Men just two days after taking office in 1977. He went on to screen new release movies like Rocky, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, and To Kill a Mockingbird.