A ballroom bunker is a perfect symbol for Trump 2.0 | Jan-Werner Müller

The edifice suggests a Silicon Valley-style desire to protect the president from national crises of his own making

A self-declared “secretary of war” keeps committing war crimes; people are dying in Africa because of Musk’s cuts to USAid; farm bankruptcies in the US are surging; ICE keeps acting with impunity; measles is spreading … and we are worried about a ballroom? The ballroom is not just the president’s peculiar obsession, but a symbol for many of the character of Trump 2.0: the unprecedented corruption; the destruction of checks and balances (as Congress, with its power of the purse, keeps being ignored); the sheer desire for vandalism. The swift pivot of Trump and his acolytes from the assassination attempt to pro-ballroom propaganda in the name of security adds two new, disturbing elements: the ballroom-as-bunker is appropriate for a leader afraid of his own people; less obviously, it also aligns Trump with the Silicon Valley figures who are anticipating an apocalypse (which their own conduct is hastening) – and who seek refuge on private islands, in newly founded cities, and indeed in what has become known as “apocalypse bunkers”.

“It cannot be built fast enough,” Trump announced after the incident on Saturday night; but reasons for his ballroom obsession predate the White House correspondents’ dinner: his biographers have pointed out that catering and ballrooms have been one of his few successful business ventures; a ballroom, just as with the space at Mar-a-Lago, provides a stage for grand entrances and adulation by crowds whose composition can be perfectly controlled; and, not least, as other aspiring autocrats have shown, a huge edifice is a statement about power: it sends a signal to critics that the leader has triumphed over them, and that his legacy – at least what he has done to the built environment – cannot be undone.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University