Donald Trump has been having a rough go of it lately. The cost-of-living crisis is tanking his approval ratings, the concert for America’s 250th anniversary is falling apart, and the Iran war is still very much ongoing despite the president repeatedly insisting a deal to end the conflict is imminent.
It’s very much not, with Iran on Monday reportedly suspending talks with the United States. “I really don’t care, I couldn’t care less,” Trump responded, adding that he thought the talks had “started to get very boring.”
It’s unclear how Trump is handling all of this, personally. On one hand, it seems like he really, truly does not care. On the other hand … well, have a scroll through his Truth Social account, where over the weekend he unloaded a torrent attacks against his perceived enemies, mostly Joe Biden, along with a stunning array of self-aggrandizing AI-slop, posting images of himself chiseled into Mount Rushmore, directing a fleet as a naval commander wearing gilded armor, and as a member of the New York Knicks dunking on New York Governor Kathy Hochul, to name a few.
Trump also announced that he is considering replacing the 250th anniversary concert with a speech, describing himself as bigger than Elvis. “I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN,” the president wrote. He attacked the artists who had dropped out of the concert in a subsequent post, and called for the event to be scrapped entirely: “Cancel it, just like I canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center, because a Highly Conflicted, Crooked Federal Judge, said that I should not be allowed to spend my time and money in order to MAKE THE CENTER GREAT AGAIN, actually, far greater than it ever was before!”
The economy, foreign policy, and other boring parts of being president may be a bother, but Trump is taking refuge in his various vanity projects around Washington, D.C. His effort to commandeer the Kennedy Center is on the rocks, but there’s also the reflecting pool, the triumphal arch, the UFC fighting cage currently being erected on the South Lawn, and the grand ballroom that is now construction on the former site of the White House’s East Wing. Trump posted plenty about all of this, too, including an AI image of the supposed “drone port” on top of the ballroom. (Trump has alleged the ballroom will serve as some sort of a military installation, ostensibly to bolster the legal argument around tearing down a huge portion of the White House to build a lavish event space without congressional approval.)
Trump took Fox News — specifically Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law — on a tour of some of his building projects later on Saturday, walking around the White House and waxing about the historic nature of the ballroom. “It will be the most secure facility ever built,” he said, fantasizing about having cocktails in the White House before taking dignitaries to the ballroom for dinner. He then lauded how the triumphal arch will be like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but bigger and “more beautiful.”
Meanwhile, Americans are struggling to make ends meet amid a war of choice against Iran that Trump seems unwilling or unable (or most likely, both) to end. He is instead spending an increasing amount of time posting on social media, mocking Democrats with AI memes and imagining himself as a messianic god-king. There’s no need to worry about the president’s mental state, though. He went to the hospital for yet another check-up last week and passed his dementia test with flying colors. “Are the Dumocrats really surprised?” he wrote on Truth Social, claiming the test was “highly difficult.”
