“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself, that was fake news,” he said while speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday night. “Probably gonna call it the Presidential Ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
Earlier that day, ABC News Washington managing editor Katherine Faulders had posted on social media that the president would “likely name the new $300 million ballroom after himself,” citing senior administration officials. She said officials were “already” calling it the “President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” and the name would “likely stick.”
On Saturday, Faulders responded to Trump’s “fake news” comments by noting that the White House itself had given ABC News a document that used the name.
“Trump said late last night ‘I don’t have any plans to call it after myself’ and calls this reporting ‘fake news,’” she wrote on X. “However, on a list of donors to the ballroom, provided to ABC News by the White House, the White House referred to it as the ‘President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.’”