President Trump and his team had scheduled Thursday to promote his “no tax on tips” provision and other elements of last summer’s sweeping tax cuts, a key midterm message as gas prices climb amid the Iran war. Instead, Trump spent hours online lashing out after US District Judge Richard Leon again blocked construction of a massive new East Wing ballroom that has already sparked criticism as a vanity project, the Wall Street Journal reports. In four Truth Social posts, Trump called Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, “Trump-hating” and accused him of undermining national security.
- “This highly political Judge, and his illegal overreach, is out of control, and costing our Nation greatly,” Trump wrote in one post. “This is a mockery to our Court System! The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security, and no Judge can be allowed to stop this Historic and Militarily Imperative Project.”
Leon’s ruling allows work to continue on underground security features such as bunkers and shelters but says ballroom construction must stop unless Congress signs off. In posts from Air Force One en route to Las Vegas, Trump also attacked Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov, who said higher fuel prices would erase gains from his tax cuts, then went after right-wing influencers Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, along with former senior counterterrorism official Joe Kent, who resigned over the Iran war. He also took aim at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying he is “DESTROYING New York” with taxes.
- Trump “mostly returned to script” after he arrived in Las Vegas, the Journal reports. At a business roundtable, he discussed the tax law, saying “thousands of Nevada waiters, waitresses, casino dealers, bartenders, bellmen, barbers, caddies” had “received the biggest tax refunds of their entire lives,” the New York Times reports. He added, “I just want to say: You’re welcome.”
- “The economy is doing so well, by the way, we had to do a little journey down to Iran, and I didn’t want to do that,” Trump said. “But we had to, because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.” He said the war is going “swimmingly” and should end soon.
- “We’re having some fake inflation because of the fuel, the energy prices, which everybody said was going to $250,” the president said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that high gas and food prices are “temporary” and will come down. Prices are coming down, and I think this summer we are going to see prices get back to normal,” he said, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “President Trump brought gasoline prices down before, and he’ll do it again.”
