Put aside your take on his politics and the fact that he sent asylum-seekers to a foreign prison where they were reportedly tortured and raped: Given what we know about President Donald J. Trump, does he seem like the sort of man who would spend millions of dollars in his own money for the benefit of someone who is not himself?

That was the premise of a White House announcement last week claiming that the president “and other patriot donors” would be financing the full, approximately $200 million cost of a gaudy, gold-tinged pseudo-classical addition to his current residence in Washington, DC. With renderings that look an awful lot like a wing at Mar-a-Lago, the so-called White House Ballroom would be a 90,000-square-foot party venue located where the “small, heavily changed, and reconstr

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