Trump’s YouTube-Insurrection Settlement Will Fund Golden White House Ballroom
Donald Trump’s ongoing quest to turn the White House into a satellite branch of Mar-a-Lago got a boost this week when YouTube agreed to pay the president $22 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed against the company over his suspension from the site following the 2021 attack on the Capitol. The money is expected to go toward the renovation of the White House ballroom.
Trump sued YouTube in 2021 for freezing his account, a move prompted by a video of Trump telling reporters, days after the insurrection, that his speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally was “totally appropriate” and that attempts to impeach him were “causing tremendous anger.” He also filed similar suits against Meta—the parent company of Instagram and Facebook—and X. His X account was restored in 2022, while his Meta accounts were restored in 2023; he also regained the ability to post on YouTube in 2023. In January, Meta said it would pay Trump $25 million; the following month, X said it would pay the president some $10 million. In the YouTube lawsuit, attorneys for Trump claimed that his First Amendment rights had been violated by the suspension because the action was allegedly taken “in response to coercion of the federal government.”* The $22 million from YouTube will, per CBS News, be directed to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit fund that is “dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall,” “to support the construction of the White House State Ballroom.” (Some legal experts have taken a dim view of the settlement. “This is straight influence-peddling,” Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor and expert on online speech, told NPR. “This YouTube settlement is not a sign of any legal merit.”)
Over the summer, the Trump administration announced that it would construct a 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House, which press secretary Karoline Leavitt described to reporters as a “much-needed and exquisite addition.” Not surprisingly, a rendering looks very Versailles-esque and includes an unrestrained use of the color gold; though the room was initially expected to have a seating capacity for 650 people, Trump later said it would hold 900.) In a statement that she may or may not have been contractually obligated to release, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told the public: “President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail.” Following the announcement, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer wondered aloud. “Where’d this money come from? Did Congress appropriate it? I don’t think so. It’s almost like DOGE was never about waste.” In September, CBS reported that a collection of individual and corporate donors—including Google, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir—had pledged to donate nearly $200 million for construction costs.
Last month, when a reporter asked how he was “holding up” in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk, Trump responded, “I think very good,” before quickly shifting focus to the ballroom. “And by the way,” he said, “right there, you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s gonna be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure.”
*Will Jimmy Kimmel file a similar lawsuit over his show having been temporarily suspended following comments by Trump’s FCC chair about doing things “the easy way or the hard way”? Stay tuned!
