"It’s a weird, decades-long fixation for a president who wanted a White House ballroom years before he became president..."

"... although he hosted just two state dinners during his first term. But majestic spaces are where the political and social elite — kings, aristocrats, tycoons — have traditionally asserted and cemented their power. 'It was a place where these structures of society were reiterated and brought into being, ... a kind of social, political, dynastic space of performance,' said Robert Wellington, author of the forthcoming book 'Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury from Louis XIV to Donald Trump.' The modern ballroom — the one most of the American bourgeoisie have come into contact with — is a staid, multimodal, commercial space: a cavernous hotel room with collapsible wall panels in aggressively beige tones, a perfectly adequate place for hosting weddings, charity dinners and professional conferences. Ask anyone to describe a 'ballroom,' though, and most will conjure something from HBO’s 'The Gilded Age'...."

From "Trump loves a swanky ballroom. So did the Gilded Age elite. The president’s vision for a palatial addition to 'the People’s House' showcases the historical ties between architecture and power" (WaPo).

That's a free-access link, because there's much more about the history of ballrooms, with plenty of interesting photographs, interspersed with the anti-Trumpism you've got to expect.

But it could be way more anti-Trump than it is. I know when I hear the theme "architecture and power," I think of the Nazis, but there's no mention of Nazi architecture in this article. Why not? The easiest answer is that Trump's aesthetic is not like the Nazis'. It's gold leaf and chandeliers. French. The Nazis wanted "an impression of simplicity, uniformity, monumentality, solidity and eternity." Ironically, it's the absence of that sort of thing in Trump's ballroom that seems to be bothering The Washington Post.