No. of Recommendations: 15
Oh, I think that will be different going forward.
No, it won't. The WH is public property, not a hotel ballroom.
Look, the President goes to events and functions and meetings and conferences outside of the WH. That's a reality. It's not going to change. His protective detail has to secure areas that aren't the WH, and always will have to.
The Ballroom is completely unrelated to that issue. Again, the WH grounds can be secured already against these kinds of threats because it's a government facility. The property isn't open to the public, you don't have uncontrolled access to the buildings, etc. Nothing in the Ballroom is needed to protect against this kind of threat.
The only reason the ballroom is being blocked is because Trump is doing it. Had this been Obama building a giant thing shaped like an 'O' the left would be cheering it.
And if Obama had been doing the ballroom, the right would have been suing him eight ways from Sunday and screaming about how he was violating the Constitution. It's one of the core truths of politics, namely that partisans will frequently support behavior done by their own "team" that they would condemn bitterly if done by the other "team" - and vice versa.
All we mere mortals can do is look at whether the substance of the criticism is correct. In this case, it is. There is no federal statute that authorizes the President to do this. In the absence of Congress making a law that provides for this type of activity, the President doesn't have the ability to do it. It's the core structure of our government - other than certain specific constitutional powers not relevant here, the President's role is to execute the laws passed by Congress. He gets to implement what Congress has done, not make his own laws or further his own priorities outside of that statutory authorization.
