The Trouble with Trump's Bunker and Ballroom

An additional day of reporting has largely confirmed the outlines of my morning-after analysis on Saturday night’s scary-but-contained security incident at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Saturday’s incident was closer on the spectrum to the Clinton era “assassination attempt” when a guy opened fire on the White House with an AK-47 from the public sidewalk than it was to Butler, where the president was actually in danger. It was just a Hail Mary at the first line of security.

There were four pieces I wanted to highlight, both good and bad:

• There was, for instance, a breathless Washington Post piece that seemed to imply some level of scandal or “laxness” in the security based on how the dinner wasn’t designated a “National Security Special Event,” but then (a) failed to mention whether that was a change from any prior WHCA dinner and (b) in its own subsequent reporting explained how the dinner failed to meet the standard for an NSSE, thereby undercutting the whole premise of the “scandal.”
  

• At the other end of the thoughtful-and-informed spectrum, one piece worth reading that brings some important nuance was this MS NOW one by Carol Leonnig, just about the only journalist who has written meaningfully about the long-term challenges of the Secret Service. She points out how the Secret Service has narrowly averted tragedy three times in two years when faced with “a low-tech lone wolf.”
  

• It’s also astounding — and worrisome — how quickly and widespread how what one might call the “median online perspective” has coalesced around the incident being staged or a false-flag operation, citing a mix of evidence. It surely wasn’t, but it’s a troubling sign of how corrupted the public backdrop of trust is and how compromised our information environments are these days. As one person joked yesterday, the strongest evidence it wasn’t staged was that no one tried to insider-trade on Kalshi or Polymarket.)
  

• Lastly, I want to highlight Brian Stelter’s very smart — and heartfelt — essay about how America’s elite merely got a taste Saturday night of what it’s like to now be a schoolchild in the US: “We need to say out loud that it was actually all too ordinary. In America this is all too common – a shots-fired moment, a chaotic lockdown, a spasm of violence interrupting a peaceful gathering. Thousands of media and political elites have now gone through what countless millions of other Americans have experienced in their schools, offices, malls and churches. And on most of those occasions, there were no Secret Service agents.” I did an entire podcast season about how America lost its mind and sense when it comes to guns, and it’s sad that one time after another, we miss the opportunities to change our country’s trajectory on gun violence.

All of which brings me to the other weird unfolding current story about presidential security: Trump’s pet project of building a new presidential ballroom. In his remarks Saturday evening from the White House and in social media posts and court filings since, President Trump has used the shooting to attempt to justify and jumpstart his construction of a giant White House ballroom. The construction of the above-ground portion of the ballroom has currently been stopped by a court order, and the Justice Department moved over the weekend to dismiss the lawsuit citing the now-pressing-and-obvious national security implications.

Trump’s argument, reinvigorated since Saturday and immediately sock-puppeted by all manner of right-wing influencers, is two-fold: First, the president needs a secure facility — unlike the Washington Hilton! — where the president can host grand gatherings, and, second, that the (re)construction of now-destroyed East Wing will enable the creation of a giant secure presidential bunker.

It’s clear that the ballroom is the thing that Donald Trump cares about more than anything in his presidency — or the world. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that he even gets distracted in war-planning meetings by talking about his ballroom.

I’m less interested in the debate over the purpose of the ballroom — except, to say that I don’t buy the justification for a moment — and plenty of others have taken on that directly. The shortest possible objection is that we can’t possibly believe or agree that the world is too dangerous for the elected leader of a democracy to ever leave his compound and that all supplicants must come to him in order to have an audience (plus Trump’s ballroom is still way smaller than the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, so it’s not like it’s an actual replacement for hotel galas.)

But I did want to talk a bit today about the bunker side of the story.

Loyal readers of RAVEN ROCK will know the short history of the White House bunker: FDR first had a facility created in World War II, to guard against surprise attack by German bombers, and then the bunker was dramatically enlarged and rebuilt for the early Cold War by Harry Truman when he embarked upon the massive renovation of the White House in 1948. The expectation was that in the event of a surprise attack, a president could be rushed down into the bunker until a special rescue mission could arrive to remove the president from the rubble. A special helicopter unit — codenamed OUTPOST MISSION — was for decades based in Pennsylvania to respond to the White House and excavate and evacuate the president. The pilots carried special dark visors and lead-shielded flight suits to protect themselves and officials from the flash and effects of a nuclear blast.

Today, the facility is known as the PEOC — the Presidential Emergency Operations Center — and is run by the White House Military Office. The facility has only been used a handful of times — including on 9/11, when it was where Vice President Cheney, the First Lady, and other administration leaders gathered and oversaw the government’s response through the day. “I was hustled inside and downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal,” Laura Bush remembered later. “We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment.”

As I wrote in RAVEN ROCK:

Later that night, after he’d returned to the White House, George W. Bush and Laura Bush were awakened and rushed down into the bunker. I actually had a page about that incident that I ended up cutting from my book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY, that I’ve published below here for the first time.

If you want to keep reading about the modern-day bunker, just skip down.

* * *

Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States: The Secret Service detail suggested that we spend the night [in the PEOC], belowground. They showed us the bed, a foldout that looked like it had been installed when FDR was president. George and I stared at it, and we both said no, George adding, “We're not going to sleep down here. We're going to go upstairs and you can get us if something happens.” We did finally climb into our own bed that night, exhausted and emotionally drained. I fell asleep, but it was a light, fitful rest, and I could feel George staring into the darkness beside me.

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, White House: I was still in my office at about 11:30 when there was a report of another plane coming to the White House.

Commander Anthony Barnes, Deputy Director, Presidential Contingency Programs, White House: I was just getting ready to depart. We got this erroneous report that there was a low-flyer inbound.

Gary Walters, Chief Usher, White House: Secret Service came running into the office and said, “Where’s the President and First Lady?” I said, “As far as I know, they’ve retired upstairs.” They said, “We need to evacuate.” We got on the elevator, went onto the second floor.

Laura Bush: I heard a man screaming as he ran, “Mr. President, Mr. President, you’ve got to get up. The White House is under attack.” We jumped up, and I grabbed a robe and stuck my feet into my slippers, but I didn't stop to put in my contacts. George grabbed Barney; I grabbed Kitty. With Spot trailing behind, we started walking down to the PEOC.

Gary Walters: At that point, the agent had already retrieved the President and First Lady. They were in their night clothes and had brought them towards the elevator.

Laura Bush: George had wanted to take the elevator, but the agents didn't think it was safe, so we had to descend flight after flight of stairs, to the state floor, then the ground floor, and below, while I held George’s hand because I couldn’t see anything.

Condoleezza Rice: We went back to the bunker.

Gary Walters: That basement corridor was full of men with guns and masks and all kinds of things that I had never seen. The pace that they hurried the President and the First Lady and Neil and myself through was astonishing.

Laura Bush: My heart was pounding, and all I could do was count stairwell landings, trying to count off in my mind how many more floors we had to go. When we reached the PEOC, I saw the outline of a military sergeant unfolding the ancient hideaway bed and putting on some sheets.

Condoleezza Rice: The president was there in his running shorts and Mrs. Bush and her robe, and the dogs were there. It was a really peculiar scene.

Gary Walters: We didn’t know what was going on. About 15 minutes later, the Secret Service said it was a false alarm, something on the radar.

Laura Bush: Another agent said, “Mr. President, it’s one of our own.” The plane was ours.

Commander Anthony Barnes: They confirmed that it wasn’t anything there, but it got their heart rate elevated quickly.

Gary Walters: We all retraced our steps and went back. 

* * *

One of the few other times in history that the bunker has ever been used was by Donald Trump himself, who was taken to the PEOC at one point in May 2020 during the George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C., when the Secret Service feared protesters would storm the White House. (They didn’t — and Trump later claimed he just happened to be “inspecting” the bunker.)

Now, as part of his surely illegal destruction of the East Wing and supposedly privately financed construction of a massive new gilded ballroom, Trump has been bragging — in ways we’ve never heard a president talk about the White House bunker — about how he’s rebuilding and expanding it.

Historically, the bunker at the White House has always been intended to be a short-term facility for continuity purposes — it’s meant to be a place a president could spend minutes or hours, as the Secret Service and military plan and execute an evacuation to a more secure site. Over recent decades, that’s generally meant either the presidential emergency bunker at Mount Weather, in Berryville, Virginia, or the backup Pentagon, the Raven Rock bunker in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, or getting the president up into the air aboard either the traditional presidential aircraft, the 747 normally used as Air Force One or the E-4B “Doomsday” plane, known as the “National Airborne Operations Center” (NAOC). (I wrote earlier in the winter about how the next generation of those planes, the E-4C, is currently in flight testing.)

The White House bunker has never been intended to be a place a president would actually run a crisis from long-term. It’s small and cramped — a place for dozens of staff, not scores or hundreds. In fact, during the 9/11 attacks, there were too many crammed into it and oxygen levels actually began to dip dangerously. Mount Weather and Raven Rock, by comparison, are meant to support a thousand or more personnel “buttoned-up” for operations of weeks or even a month.

We of course don’t know the precise plans for the newly reconstructed bunker, but Trump has talked about it in a greater level of detail than we’ve ever heard before. In one Truth Social post in mid-April, Trump explained the new ballroom addition would also include: “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass.”

In other remarks to the press aboard Air Force One, Trump called the ballroom a “shed” for the new bunker: “The military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction, and we’re doing very well,” Mr. Trump said. “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.”

Understanding that it’s often impossible to know as Donald Trump talks what’s real, what’s not, and what’s mere hyperbole, the scale of what he’s mentioned would represent a sharp departure from the traditional purpose of the presidential bunker. Certainly a “massive” bunker could contribute to the spiraling construction costs, which keep jumping by the hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars.

It sounds like from what we have seen Donald Trump talk about that the Trump administration, with no apparent authorization or approval by Congress, is attempting to build a different type of presidential emergency facility altogether — a large, long-term facility that could sustain presidential operations for days or even weeks. This would run counter to literally decades of presidential continuity planning and evacuation plans, all of which hold that the most important thing is to get the president out of the identifiable, known location of the White House and into motion, either to a bunker or aircraft, where he would be harder to locate and target. The whole point of the presidential evacuation and “Continuity of the Presidency” planning is you want to get the president out of the place where everyone knows where he is and get him into a place where people don’t know where he is. The last thing we should be doing is investing in a new giant bunker facility at the place most readily identifiable with where the president is.

Moreover, it’s hard to imagine why a president would EVER need a White House bunker to use for more than a few short hours? What’s the situation where the facilities of the Oval Office and Situation Room complex in the West Wing are rendered destroyed and unusable and yet the Secret Service thinks it’s smart to keep the president buried even deeper under the White House?

One of the only scenarios I can think of for why a president would require a long-term bunker underneath the White House itself was not to weather a terrorist or hostile attack but if he was trying to weather a POLITICAL attack — e.g., you had a president who refused to cede the White House at the end of his duly elected term or following a 25^th Amendment or impeachment-and-removal scenario and didn’t want to abandon the physical manifestation of presidential power at the White House, and instead retreated to the bunker complex underneath with some group of regime loyalists and corrupt Secret Service agents. Beyond that? We have all the machinery, vehicles, and facilities to weather just about any presidential contingency or emergency.

I’m not arguing that Donald Trump is planning a Hitler-in-the-bunker last stand for 2029 — in fact, I think the answer is likely merely that he’s an ailing egotistical narcissist desperate to secure a permanent legacy on the president’s house for all of history — but I do think a major reason that White House construction and renovations should unfold with the assent and understanding of Congress and through the appropriations system is so that Congress as a separate-and-equal branch has a check-and-balance in just how extensive the fortifications of the White House end up being. Strong enough to sustain a hostile attack? Absolutely! Strong enough to withstand the end of democracy? Absolutely not.

Instead Donald Trump appears to be taking some strange and not-fully-disclosed mix of private financing for the ballroom and bunker project, channeling additional inflated no-bid contracts to the ballroom’s main contractor, and even accepting foreign favors to speed the construction of the project before it has a chance to be reviewed by the courts or Congress. (Also, one of the reasons to have a normal process is so that reconstruction of the presidential bunker isn’t halted midway through — which is exactly what has happened right now. The Secret Service has filed court papers saying it’s imperative that construction of the bunker continues, but this, like almost everything Trump does, is a crisis of his own making. The arsonist is whining about the fire he started.)

Everything about the Trump ballroom is fishy, and we deserve better answers than we have.

Should the Secret Service take a second look at its security for events at the Washington Hilton? Yup.

But is Saturday’s incident a “unleash the hounds” moment to race into existence a permanent new ballroom and bunker for the president at the White House? Nope. And Washington can’t and shouldn’t be shamed into acquiescing as if this is the panicked time after 9/11.

GMG