(AP Photo\/Alex Brandon)<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump reportedly ordered his motorcade to stop at a Florida strip mall Friday morning so he could purchase supplies for his $400 million White House ballroom.<\/p>\n
White House pool reports said the presidential motorcade \u201carrived at a shopping center in Lake Worth, Florida at 9:46 AM\u201d so Trump could go \u201cshopping at Arc Stone & Tile,\u201d an importer of Italian marble.<\/p>\n
When pressed, a\u00a0White House official said that the president \u201cis purchasing lake and onyx, at his own expense, for the White House ballroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although he may pay for the materials himself, conservative publication The New Republic pointed out<\/a> that the president was shopping for his construction project \u201con the taxpayer\u2019s dime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has brought his longtime obsession with marble to his second term, pushing for it to appear just about everywhere,\u201d TNR reported, noting that Trump \u201credid the bathroom in the White House Lincoln Suite<\/a> entirely in marble, and he has proposed marble armrests for the Kennedy Center, claiming it would be \u2018unlike anything ever done or seen before!’\u201d<\/p>\n Trump proudly shared photos of the Lincoln bathroom\u2019s marble makeover replete with gold fixtures, writing on Truth Social in October that the \u201cart deco green tile style\u201d used in the 1940s \u201cwas totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI did it in black and white polished Statuary marble,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cThis was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s ballroom construction program came under fire immediately after he began tearing down<\/a> the entire East Wing of the White House. The president initially said the ballroom would cost around $200 million, before revising it to $400 million. Trump has said the ballroom is completely privately funded<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump has been staying at his private Florida club at Mar-a-Lago for New Year\u2019s Eve celebrations. He also met there with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n The post Trump\u2019s Motorcade Reportedly Stops At a \u2018Random\u2019 FL Strip Mall So He Could Buy Marble For His Ballroom Project<\/a> first appeared on Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP Photo\/Alex Brandon) President Donald Trump reportedly ordered his motorcade to stop at a Florida strip mall Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,1210,42,11334,120159,120161,43,48392,120160,40,38,41,39,7421],"class_list":["post-217184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-florida","tag-headlines","tag-italian-marble","tag-lake-worth","tag-motorcade","tag-news","tag-shopping-center","tag-statuary-marble","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}