Just hours after an armed man rushed the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, spurring evacuations and scuttling the event, President Trump and allies online had coalesced around a solution for presidential security.
The mayhem proved, once and for all, they argued, the need for the new White House ballroom that Mr. 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,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media on Sunday morning. “It cannot be built fast enough!”
He raised the issue again in an interview with “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News late Sunday morning, talking about challenges of securing the Washington Hilton, the mega-hotel where the shooting occurred. The proposed ballroom is subject to litigation that has repeatedly slowed the project’s progress — and frustrated the president.
To the president and dozens of his most prominent supporters online, the chaotic disruption of the dinner helped illustrate why the lawsuit seeking to stop construction of the ballroom should be dismissed. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had already argued in court that a judge should allow the project to move ahead because it would improve security and allow for larger events at the White House campus.
But the coordinated effort to link security at the dinner to the tug of war over the ballroom project largely ignored the realities of the annual dinner and the circumstances of the breach on Saturday evening.
The White House Correspondents Association, which organizes the dinner, is an independent organization whose members are journalists that cover the White House.
The group had faced intense criticism this year for inviting the president, as it has annually for years, in light of Mr. Trump’s efforts to investigate journalists and sue media outlets that do not favorably cover his administration. It was not clear that the organization would have agreed to hold the event on the White House grounds, even if space were offered, out of concerns over independence of the press.
The organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Trump’s ballroom remarks.
The New York Times stopped buying seats at the event in 2008, citing the value of editorial independence and distance from the celebrities and politicians who regularly attend.
The dinner is just one of dozens of private events that presidents traditionally attend outside the White House. The Washington Hilton, which has hosted the event for decades, is a sprawling complex built to accommodate multiple large events. It is the same venue outside of which John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The White House Correspondents Association has held the event since 1921, and every modern president has attended at least one dinner, though Mr. Trump did not during his first term.
Just over a week ago, a federal judge escalated the legal standoff over the ballroom by ordering a halt to aboveground construction, saying the president appeared intent on skirting a previous order by redefining the project as a critical national security upgrade.
Judge Richard J. Leon said that adding features like bulletproof windows and other standard security features that exist throughout the White House did not exempt the ballroom project from his directives. “National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” Judge Leon wrote.
Judge Leon has ruled that Mr. Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally rebuild the White House without approval from Congress. A federal appeals court has allowed construction to continue while it reviews Judge Leon’s decision.
The president’s ballroom plans call for a 90,000 square-foot structure on the former site of the East Wing. He has said it will be paid for by $400 million in private donations, and has declined to list the donors. The Times has identified some of them.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained about a lack of indoor event space in the White House and proposed the ballroom as a way to host larger gatherings.
A former real estate developer, Mr. Trump has rushed the construction with little time for public review, and in his post on Sunday he again decried a lawsuit seeking to block it a “ridiculous campaign by “a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit.”
The lawsuit, he wrote, “must be dropped, immediately,” and “nothing should be allowed to interfere” with further construction.
He made similar comments about the need for a White House ballroom at a news conference on Saturday night, only hours after he was rushed from the stage at the Washington Hilton by his Secret Service protection team.
There were no metal detectors set up at the entrances to the Hilton on Saturday night, and a secure perimeter was only established closer to the ballroom deeper inside the hotel. A security video posted by Mr. Trump showed the gunman sprinting past the security checkpoint before being captured before he could enter the ballroom.
“It’s not a particularly secure building,” he said of the Hilton, before launching into a familiar pitch for the necessity of his ballroom. “It’s bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom.”
Despite the legal setbacks, at each turn, both Judge Leon and a panel of appeals court judges have allowed the president to keep building while litigation has continued.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued last year to stop the ballroom, has argued that it required approval from Congress. Lawyers representing the organization have also said that the president’s emphasis on new national security features has been a strategic effort to skirt other questions about the legality of the project.
A spokesman for the National Trust did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday about Mr. Trump’s efforts to tie the events at the media dinner to his ballroom construction.
