JUST hours after an armed man rushed the White House Corres-pondents’ Association dinner in Washington DC last weekend, spurring evacuations and scuttling the event, President Donald Trump and allies online had coalesced around a solution for presidential security.
As The New York Times reported, the mayhem proved, once and for all, they argued, the need for the new White House ballroom that Trump has made a top priority since at least October.
“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump wrote in a post on social media Sunday morning. “It cannot be built fast enough!”
The proposed ballroom is subject to litigation that has repeatedly slowed the project’s progress – and frustrated the president.
While most public attention has focused on the aboveground portion of President Donald Trump’s planned US$400mil (RM1.6bil) ballroom, what is underneath could prove to be the more complex and expensive portion of the project.
Work crews dug in the earth for weeks, ripping out the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC, to build a bigger, better and deeper underground bunker.
The PEOC, which was built during World War II to protect the president and other top officials in the event of an emergency, was where former US vice president Dick Cheney was hustled after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, later to be joined by then president George W. Bush and his national security teams. Trump was rushed there, too, during protests over the death of George Floyd in 2020.
The bunker is beneath what was once the East Wing, which Trump tore down last year to make way for his ballroom.
Details of the underground facility are usually shrouded in secrecy. But as Trump’s ballroom faces legal challenges, he has talked more openly about the bunker. He has argued that the two are linked, which makes building the ballroom a matter of security.
Here’s what to know about the ‘Massive’ military bunker beneath Trump’s ballroom:
‘A Massive Military Complex’
As Trump told the media, he envisioned his 90,000-square-foot ballroom as a “shed” for the underground project.
The massive complex under the ballroom is being built by the military and in Trump’s telling, the bunker will have bomb shelters and “very major medical facilities,” including a hospital. It will have the latest secure communication methods and defences against bioweapons.
He said the ballroom would protect the underground facility from drones, bullets and other attacks. “It’s high-grade bulletproof glass. So all of the windows are bulletproof,” Trump said.
According to Trump, “the military wanted it more than anybody.”
However, a judge halted the project in March, saying it required congressional approval.
“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorisation, construction has to stop!” wrote Judge Richard J. Leon of the US District Court in Washington, a George W. Bush appointee.
Trump ordered an appeal, but he pointed to a section of Leon’s order that allowed “construction necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House” to continue.
“We have biodefence all over,” Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office. “We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building. We have all of these things. So that’s called: I’m allowed to continue building.”
There are still many unanswered questions about the project, including which branch or branches of the military are involved, the costs of construction and maintenance, and many other details.
Joshua Fisher, director for management and administration in the White House, told the National Capital Planning Commission in January that he could not share all the administration’s plans for the project.
“There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on,” he said.
When asked about the underground portion of the project, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, was equally close-mouthed, and only said: “The military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House, and I’m not privy to provide any more details on that.” — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This was first published by The New York Times.
