The President has ordered his motorcade around D.C. to do recon for modifications he wants to make to the city. Not long ago, he had piles of construction rubble from the White House dumped onto a historic, public golf course in East Potomac Park. This past weekend, Trump attempted to close the course to begin work on transforming it into a luxury golf club. “He’s this imperial President, but he’s, like, Let’s play it softer,” the strategist said. “It’s about civic projects, having celebrations and spectacle. He’s going to build a huge arch for himself.”
Shortly after the protester hoisted himself onto the bridge, Trump left for a weekend swing through Florida, arriving in the Villages, the largest retirement community in the country. “What’s a more secure place than the Villages?” he asked. He knew that they loved him there. The sea of red hats could’ve been a campaign ad; a fleet of expectant seniors on scooters waited to greet him. At a rally inside a high-school gym, Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” played through the loudspeakers and the scoreboard read “45–47.” With the midterms approaching, Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, had already issued a directive to Trump’s Cabinet to limit international travel and focus on the Administration’s domestic agenda. It was time to pivot to kitchen-table issues, for Trump to sell his supporters on the victories of his Presidency. He did the weave like a college professor who knows a lecture by heart: trans athletes, the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s deficiencies and failures. It was evergreen Trumpism, a vision untouched by the passage of time. A banner strung up behind Trump read “Golden Age for your Golden Years.” There would be no tax on Social Security, and the price of prescription drugs would keep going down. “We have a man here who knows more about Medicaid, Medicare, medical crap than any human being,” Trump said, gesturing to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “ ‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘You work out the details.’ All I want to do is take care of you.”
That evening, Trump posted a photo of himself holding a handful of Uno cards—all “wild”—captioned “I have all the cards.” (The messaging coming from the White House can sometimes be hard to parse; in Uno, having all the cards means that you lose.) Last week, Wiles, usually so reserved in public that Trump calls her the “ice maiden,” launched an X account to, as they say, reach voters where they are. “We are relentlessly focusing on advancing President Trump’s agenda and delivering on promises to the American people. I welcome different viewpoints. Follow along for insights and information,” she wrote. Some commenters complained about Trump’s ballroom and the war in Iran; others asked what had happened to mass deportations and the SAVE Act and jailing political opponents. Meanwhile, in the White House briefing room this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio filled in for Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary now on maternity leave, quoting rap lyrics in response to questions about Iran. (Its leaders, he said, are “insane in the brain” and should “check themselves before they wreck themselves.”) He said that Operation Epic Fury was “over,” and that U.S. warships would start to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, using force if necessary: Operation Project Freedom. Just after Rubio left the podium, Trump undercut the whole thing to say that Project Freedom was on hold—negotiations to end the war that Rubio had said was already over were apparently going well.
On Wednesday, Trump received four fighters in the Oval Office to reveal a new belt made specially for a U.F.C. bout that will be held on the South Lawn next month, on the President’s eightieth birthday. “Here’s a picture,” he said, bringing out renderings of the stage for the fight. “Not bad, right?” He held up a book with the models of the fighting ring. “Our country is invited to this,” he said. “It’s free.” The White House camera zoomed in on the images as he flipped through them. “Never going to happen again, never happened before,” he said, like a carnival barker. “Greatest show on earth at night. That’s all lighting.” The Ellipse will be turned into an event venue that can accommodate up to a hundred thousand people, who can watch the fight on enormous screens. One fighter credited Trump with bringing U.F.C. into the mainstream, back in his pre-Presidential days, when it was hard for them to get arenas. “Nobody believed in us,” the fighter said. “They thought we were just absolute animals. You gave us a chance to fight in your properties.” Trump asked a gaggle of journalists if there were any questions for the fighters. “I’ll bridge this,” a TV reporter said, trying to ask about Iran by asking about fighting. “You’re facing—wait, wait, this will work. You’re facing an opponent right now in Iran that has refused to submit.” Trump cited how well he thought the wartime stock market was doing: “I thought we’d be down maybe twenty per cent, and we’re up.”
