East Wing demolished for new White House State Ballroom
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
President Trump’s plan for a $300 million White House ballroom funded entirely by private donors has drawn reactions that mirror our partisan divide—what you thought before you heard the news likely governs what you think of it now. Meanwhile, as James Marriott observes, “reading for pleasure has fallen by 40 percent in the last twenty years,” and “politics in the age of short-form video favors heightened emotion, ignorance, and unevidenced assertions.” Gary Burge warns that neglecting Scripture “removes the chief authority on which our faith is built.” Let’s return to God’s word until our hearts again “burn within us.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings on this Friday, October the 24th, 2025, and welcome to Denison Forum's Daily |
| 0:09.1 | Article podcast. Today's daily article is authored by our CEO, Dr. Jim Denison, and narrated by |
| 0:16.4 | yours truly, Chris Elkins. Last July, the Trump administration announced plans to construct the White House State |
| 0:25.9 | Ballroom, explaining that President Trump and other, quote, patriot donors would supply the |
| 0:32.4 | $200 million needed to build the structure. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump raised the estimate cost to $300 million. |
| 0:41.9 | Demolition of the East Wing was finished yesterday to make way for the new ballroom. As always, |
| 0:47.6 | seems to be the case with political stories these days. What you thought before you heard the news |
| 0:53.1 | likely governs what you think of it now. |
| 0:56.0 | You can applaud Mr. Trump for funding the addition entirely with private donations, or you can |
| 1:02.1 | claim that the money is coming from companies chasing favors. |
| 1:06.0 | You can agree with an administration spokesman's prediction that Mr. Trump's long-needed upgrades will benefit |
| 1:13.3 | future generations of future presidents, or you can complain that the White House is not his |
| 1:19.0 | house. In a recent poll, 92% of Democrats said that the U.S. is going in the wrong direction, |
| 1:25.9 | but only 24% of Republicans agreed. |
| 1:29.2 | This 68-point partisan gap is the widest recorded in history of such polling. |
| 1:35.5 | Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of Americans believe our political system is too politically divided |
| 1:41.6 | to solve our nation's problems. |
| 1:44.0 | Here's a solution you may not have considered. |
| 1:47.4 | Reading. |
| 1:48.3 | Cultural commentator James Marriott reports that by the beginning of the 18th century, |
| 1:54.1 | the expansion of education and an explosion of cheap books |
| 1:58.5 | sparked what became known as the reading revolution. Reading was |
... |
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