CBS’s Weijia Jiang found herself on the CBS Evening News complaining about the ballroom currently under construction in the East Wing of The White House. This was NOT how she’d planned her evening to turn out.
Watch the brief in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, October 20th, 2025:
WATCH: CBS's Weijia Jiang whines about the White House ballroom and echoes Dem shutdown talking points pic.twitter.com/CCj1v4cMv1
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 21, 2025
MAURICE DuBOIS: The president initially said his new ballroom would be near The White House, and would not change the existing building. And then the demolition crews arrived. Here’s Weijia Jiang.
WEIJIA JIANG: Construction of the more than 90,000 square-foot ballroom is considered the most significant renovation project here in over a century. Today, crews started demolishing part of the East Wing of The White House. The $250 million project is being privately funded by wealthy donors. This rendering shows the expected size of the ballroom compared to the rest of The White House. Some Democrats have criticized President Trump for focusing on a new ballroom while the government remains shut down.
Having exhausted all other narrative options when it comes to the White House ballroom, the legacies play up the tired shutdown optics angle. This is what Jiang held until the very last line of her tiny brief- to get in that last narrative hit edgewise in what is otherwise a harmless story.
The ballroom is being financed with private funding, and creates working-class jobs in Washington, D.C. which are, AGAIN, privately-funded. The story is really a dud but, for Jiang, it was a final fallback from the story she REALLY wanted to report.
Jiang was gunning for the “Colombian fishermen” story today while covering the joint press availability between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. But she got shut down and never had the chance to ask the question.
EARLIER TODAY: CBS's Weijia Jiang tries to ask POTUS about the "fishermen" in the Caribbean Sea and gets shut down pic.twitter.com/snURu493va
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 21, 2025
Instead of a grand item built around that quote and President Trump’s ongoing beef with Colombia’s ladyboy-adjacent president, viewers are stuck with a shutdown talking point grafted to the end of a report on construction. There’s your legacy media for you.
