Donald Trump struts onto the new White House helipad, an 80,000-sq.-ft. expanse of carved granite on the South Lawn. The President lingers over the details of the project with obvious pleasure, pointing out the gray stone imported from Italy and describing how five separate sections were fitted together, with measurements he says are precise to an eighth of an inch. Behind him rises a bigger renovation project: the new White House ballroom, its concrete skeleton consuming the former East Wing.
Lawsuits have followed the endeavor, alleging that Trump demolished the historic structure and began building its replacement without congressional authorization or the required federal reviews. Trump points to the walls, calling them “nuclear concrete” (the sort, he says, used in nuclear facilities), and describes a military complex beneath the ballroom that will plunge six stories underground. There will be five separate floors, he says, with one side made entirely of glass, 6 or 8 in. thick.
He holds his hands apart to demonstrate. There are freshly painted doors, new gold doorknobs, the Rose Garden lawn ripped out and replaced with a Mar-a-Lago-style patio, where he now presides over dinners at what he calls the Rose Garden Club. At one of the lowest points of his presidency, he is absorbed with the physical details of a world he can remake to his liking.
There is something revealing in the contrast. Here, he can still point to a wall and say how thick it should be, decide where the grass ends and the stone begins, make demands and have them fulfilled. With his presidency seemingly spinning off course, Trump has busied himself with things he can control.
Outside these gates, events have become increasingly resistant to Trump’s will. The war in Iran, launched without congressional authorization and initially described by Trump as a four-to-six-week undertaking, is seven months old when we meet, with no end in sight. It has sent oil and gasoline prices soaring and convulsed the global economy.
Inflationary pressures compounded by Trump’s tariffs have pushed the Federal Reserve—now led by his handpicked chairman—to raise interest rates over his objections, with another hike possible before year’s end. Mortgage rates have climbed to 7.5%, worsening an already punishing housing market. The political coalition that returned Trump to power has frayed, with signs of discontent among independents, rural voters, and parts of the Latino electorate, even as his GOP base remains substantially loyal.
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