Every president addresses a crisis differently. While mired deep in the Vietnam War escalation, Lyndon B. Johnson spoke about America being "guardians at the gate" with a sense of reluctant obligation. After 9/11, George W. Bush spoke of terrorists shaking the foundations of buildings but never "shaking the foundation of America." Both of those leaders used their rhetoric to justify doing very bad, wrong things, but they at least did the very bad, wrong things while pretending to have a sense of decorum. People hearing their speeches felt that they were taking a situation seriously and attempting to make sense of it.
And then there is Donald J. Trump, who today — just as he issued more threats to Iran — called an impromptu press conference that played out more like the world's worst fever dream. Was it about the Middle East, or Cuba, or perhaps developments with China after last week's state visit with Xi Jinping? Like hell it was! It was, of course, about the ballroom.
Yes, the ballroom. The president spoke to the nation from the construction site of his brand new White House events space, a partially taxpayer-funded, partly private-investment-with-little-to-no-transparency ballroom that experts say could end up costing Americans well over $1 billion. Good thing, then, that we are awash in cash, and not throwing millions away every day on a useless, geopolitically unwise and economically devastating war in the Middle East.
So here was Trump, absurdly speaking over the noise of drills and excavators, delivering remarks on how tall the ballroom will eventually be. The president spoke to the nation via reporters Tuesday from the active construction site of his planned White House ballroom with hammers banging away and power saws creating a constant din.
Networks pulled away from the acting Attorney General — his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche — testifying before the Senate about the 2027 budget because of the president suddenly announcing this gaggle. And when the cameras alighted on Donald, he was talking logistics. Construction logistics.
He gestured to where the facade of the ballroom will eventually be to a small gathering of White House reporters, adding that there will never be another building as great as this, and does not he know it, since he has built so many in his time. The ballroom will have a flat, steel, "drone-proof" roof, Trump said, his voice straining above the noise of power saws. "You can see the very large piping and other things down here — it is a very complex building," he continued, pointing downwards where workers in high-vis vests were wandering around the construction site with tools. Elsewhere, the Senate hearing continued on.
Twelve minutes in, a reporter shouted a question over the escalating sound of hammers, asking about why Congress is approving funds for the building when the president initially said it would be paid for "out of pocket."
"Congress is issuing money for security," Trump projected back, as the hammers continued. "Some of it may go here for additional security, I do not know."
And then he was back into the logistics of the building, pointing out wooden beams below his vantage point and how they would support the large, white columns pictured on a large poster propped up on an easel next to him. A full 20 minutes into the press conference, his security detail handed him the poster. "It is so beautiful," he said, taking it in his hands. Then he made a joke about how he looks thinner when he is holding a giant poster over his waistline.
A reporter interrupted the waistline jokes to ask if he was going to make a deal with Cuba. "Oh yeah, I think so," he said, quickly, the huge picture of the ballroom still in both of his hands, a clear visual display of his own priorities.
"The Cuban-American people of Miami, well, they are amazing people," he added, moving the poster back and forth as drills started up again behind him. He wants to help them, he clarified, because he got "97% of their vote" in the last election, he claimed.
Five minutes later, the poster was back on the easel and Trump was ranting about one of his Republican foes, Rep. Thomas Massie, and "transgender for everybody." The construction noise reached a crescendo as he went into a familiar rant about illegal immigration, and he was forced to shout. "We are taking in nobody!" he yelled, his hands flailing around as the hammers and the drills and the digging equipment ramped up in decibels.
Thirty-five minutes in, he still had not finished. He took one question about whether he prefers light or dark blue in interior decor (he wanted light, but they went with dark after some advice), followed immediately by another asking whether MAGA is divided (nope, it is "the strongest it has ever been"!) It took over 40 minutes to get to Iran, where questions about gasoline prices and stock market problems led to the old familiar Trump administration claim: Iran having a nuclear weapon is worse than anything else that could possibly happen. He is glad, he said, that "everyone can put up with it for a little while," and by the way, there is oil all over the world anyway, even in Alaska.
"Some people disagree with the Iran thing," he added. "Some people think you should not have borders, you should not have walls… I think you have to have borders."
At 45 minutes, it was a rant about how he had supposedly transformed American healthcare, ending with, "Listen — go have breakfast, have a good time. The next time you come here, those columns will be standing even taller." There was a huge crash from the site below as he added that the "underneath part" of the building is "more complex than the upper." Inflation may be high, the Middle East may be unstable, constitutional norms may be collapsing — but have you seen the six-story foundation to the new ballroom?
Well, thanks to this morning, we have certainly heard it. Trump is, quite clearly, a man who heard the term "legacy-building" and took it literally. But he is also a man who has the unmistakable energy of a wealthy retiree terrorizing contractors during a home extension. He spends most of his time at the golf club in Florida, he obsesses over roofs and wall colors, he rants about how young people just need to suck it up when the economy does not work for them and talks loudly about the good-for-nothing enemies supposedly plotting his downfall while the people around him smile and nod and try and remember his glory days as a way to assuage their building anxiety. And now he demands the attention of the entire nation as he gets into the extremely boring, extremely granular details of his latest renovation project. The approval numbers show that people do not like this, even Trump people, but he is way beyond caring.
All of which leads us past the scene of the drilling, round the towering columns on the poster, and up to the overwhelming question: Would you give your paranoid, declining, hopelessly out-of-touch grandfather, whose most scintillating insight today was that "Rome likes a flat roof and Greece likes the triangles," access to the nuclear codes?
