Trump uses lavish ballroom, pro wrestling legend to move past Epstein saga

WASHINGTON — Trade deals and a luxury ballroom and Triple H in the Roosevelt Room. Oh my.

President Donald Trump began the week trying to play down his past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, but he wrapped it up announcing more trade deals, revised tariff rates for dozens of countries and a major White House renovation project, as congressional Democrats tried to keep up the heat about the documents scandal related to the deceased and convicted sex offender.

Amid his efforts to change the subject from the scandal that has riled up parts of his base, including conservative online influencers, this week brought some surreal moments. They included a presidential bicep squeeze of Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the 14-time World Wrestling Entertainment champion who now is the company’s chief content officer.

“He’s really an amazing athlete, Triple H. ... Oh, that’s still very strong. He’s a strong guy.” Trump said to laughter Thursday in the Roosevelt Room as he lightly squeezed the right bicep of the former performer whose nicknames included “The Game” and “The King of Kings.” Levesque was at the White House as a member of the newly restored President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

White House officials were eager this week to cast Trump as going about his business as president, setting up meetings with British and European leaders and announcing trade arrangements with and tariff rates for a number of countries. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday announced that construction on Trump’s promised White House ballroom would begin next month and even presented ample details about the $200 million project.

There were signs that Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy to distract from the Epstein scandal was gaining traction. On Thursday, after Trump had announced the restoration of his sports council and the presidential fitness test for school-age children, he took questions. The first five were about his personal sports heroes, the proposed White House ballroom, the event space’s financing streams and foreign policy hot spots. The sixth was on Epstein.

On the large party facility to be built on the White House compound’s east side, Trump said “no government dollars” would be used, telling reporters he would foot some of the bill and the rest would be picked up by “donors or whatever.” He referred to the project — which also would include a major “modernization” of the East Wing, according to Leavitt — as a “legacy project.”

Congressional Democrats, however, see a vanity project — and a distraction amid ongoing economic headwinds.

“With crises piling up across the country — the Trump White House is focused on a $200 Million ballroom? Gutting the historic Rose Garden and covering the Oval Office in ‘gold’ were just a start,” Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, wrote Thursday on X. “Think of a gold decked ballroom for the People’s House every time you hear Billionaires needed a tax break.”

The Senate’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, also panned the project in a video posted on social media.

“This is what DOGE was all about, folks — cutting things, taking things away from you, and not giving it to some place that needed it, giving it to the big shots who run the show. Donald Trump at the top of the list,” the New York Democrat said.

Yet, Trump contended Thursday “they’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years. But there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms. I’m really good.” (He did not specify who “they” might be.)

“In fact, I looked at one that we just built in Turnberry in Scotland, and it’s incredible,” Trump said of one of his British golf clubs, which he visited late last month. “We’re good at building. I’m good at building things. And we’ll get it built quickly and on time.”

And as Team Trump attempts to move beyond the base-roiling Epstein scandal, Schumer and his fellow Democrats have sought to fan the flames of the GOP’s intraparty bickering.

“Donald Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. He broke that promise. In February, FBI Director Kash Patel promised during sworn testimony in his confirmation hearing he would ‘make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened.’ Well, that has yet to happen,” Schumer said at a news conference Wednesday.

“AG (Pamela) Bondi said in February that a supposed ‘client list,’ she said, was sitting on her desk right now to review. And she said that’s been a directive by President Trump. Five months later, we have zero answers, only more questions. What have we gotten since? Stonewall, evasion, lies,” he added.

‘Pushing up prices’

Along with emailing fundraising pitches to supporters that credited divine intervention with twice preventing Trump’s assassination, the president’s team also spent the week talking up new trade deals and touting new economic data. A weaker-than-expected Friday jobs report for July was blamed on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell not lowering interest rates. That data also revised down by 258,000 jobs the reports for May and June, undercutting Trump’s claims of a “hot” economic picture.

Kevin Hassett, the president’s top economic adviser, called a report detailing 3% gross domestic product growth during the second quarter a “sweet spot” in terms of economic growth. A White House statement called the GDP report an “absolute blockbuster.”

“It’s really one of the best GDP announcements or releases that you could imagine because there’s blockbuster growth, way above expectation,” Hassett told reporters Wednesday on a sweltering White House north driveway. “And there’s also almost a real ... collapse of inflation. It went down by about a percent and a half, down to 2.1%, which is the Fed’s target.”

Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, also dismissed notions that the president’s tariffs have hamstrung the economy.

“And I will add that all of this happened while $127 billion in tariffs was raised, which is clearly not harming the American consumer,” he added. “And we’ve been downsizing government to be more fiscally responsible.”

But Powell, who has faced pressure from Team Trump to lower rates, contended otherwise in Wednesday remarks announcing that the central bank would keep rates static.

“Increased tariffs are pushing up prices in some categories of goods,” he said. “Near-term measures of inflation expectations have moved up on balance over the course of this year on news about tariffs.” What’s more, Procter & Gamble announced this week that, in reaction to Trump’s tariffs, it soon would boost prices on items such as Charmin toilet paper, Crest toothpaste and Tide laundry detergent. Those increases would each be in the single-digit percentages, but even modest hikes can add up fast for everyday items.

White House aides this week expressed confidence the president — who has evaded significant political damage from a slew of criminal charges and other scandals — will also survive the Epstein uproar and be proved correct about his prediction that tariffs will boost the economy and create new jobs.

The White House’s official X account on Thursday posted a video of Triple H walking out of a West Wing entrance, recreating his ring entrance as a WWE performer. It was set to his longtime theme song, “The Game” by Motorhead.

The former champion-turned-executive even, as he did during his career, spit water into the air standing where Trump often greets other world leaders. Shot in slow motion, Levesque in his Triple H persona nodded as Motorhead’s guitars wailed and lead singer Lemmy Kilmister dropped those now-famous words: “It’s time to play the game.”