LONDON — How powerful is the U.S. president? Enough to take the weightiest job imaginable and make it pretty entertaining.
Take a couple of weeks recently out of Donald Trump’s life. He slept Wednesday night in a castle fit quite literally for a king, the guest of a British leadership eager to impress a president who likes to be honored.
He left Thursday for a White House that he’s remaking to suit his tastes. Workers have been digging up trees to accommodate his passion project: a new ballroom that will seat up to 900 guests.
Trump’s trip to Yankee Stadium on Sept. 11 to watch a baseball game was the ninth sporting event he’s attended since retaking office, compared to just one at the same point in his first term, NBC News research shows. Next week, he heads to Long Island to watch the Ryder Cup golf tournament at the fabled Bethpage Black course.
Since his inauguration, Trump has been fashioning a presidency aligned with his preferences, taking presidential diversions in new directions. He has taken about a third as many domestic trips to promote policy initiatives than last time around, while plunging into pursuits that one might consider, well, fun.
Presidents have long sought ways to lighten the burden. Barack Obama golfed and played full-court basketball with friends. Joe Biden regularly attended Mass and relaxed at his beach house in Delaware. At the start of the modern presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt routinely mixed pre-dinner cocktails for aides and friends at what he dubbed “The Children’s Hour.”
The dynamics of Trump’s second term differs from his first, freeing him from certain obligations and opening up new ways to organize his time. He was up for re-election last time around and had held eight rallies by this point in the calendar.
No longer a candidate, Trump has done fewer campaign-style events so far this year, though he is expected to return to the trail for the 2026 congressional elections, a person close to the White House said.
Meantime, the onetime real estate magnate is taking on projects that pique his interest. One involves White House’s decor: picking out paintings for the walls that had been lying in storage.
“To me, it’s enjoyment; to other people, it’s work,” he told NBC News in an interview over the summer.
A beneficiary of Trump’s approach is Vice President JD Vance. Vance has picked up some of the tasks that past presidents typically shouldered, giving him on-the-job training and potentially setting him up for a presidential bid of his own in 2028. Vance has been traveling into battleground states touting Trump’s signature legislative achievement, giving voters an early look at the ’28 Republican front-runner.
And Vance will represent the U.S. at the Group of 20 summit meeting of global leaders in South Africa in November, standing in for Trump.
While King Charles feted Trump and treated him to a carriage ride at Windsor Castle this week, Vance, back home, toured a precision metal stamping plant in Howell, Michigan, and touted the president’s tax cuts.
Trump is, of course, getting his briefings, pushing his agenda and negotiating with world leaders. One aide described seeing Trump working in the Oval Office at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, pressing lawmakers to support his megabill, which passed in early July.
Trump closed out his meetings with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday by signing a joint agreement to collaborate on high-tech projects, including artificial intelligence.
At a news conference with Starmer, Trump said that he will be talking to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to discuss ways to keep the popular social media app TikTok up and running.
“We had a very sick country one year ago, and today I believe we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said during his remarks Wednesday at the state banquet hosted by the royal family.
“President Trump is the most hardworking and effective president in history, as evidenced by his over 200 Executive Orders that have vastly outpaced his recent predecessors and helped cool inflation, unleash American energy, secure the border and more,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “While the President is spending ample time in the Oval Office working on Americans’ behalf, he also leverages a strategic travel schedule — which has included foreign trips that delivered massive investments into our country, as well as events that meet people where they are, from UFC fights, to America 250 events, to sporting events.”
Trump has added gilded flourishes to the Oval Office, while paving over the Rose Garden to protect high-heeled shoes and wingtips from the soggy grass. At a dinner he hosted on the new patio earlier this month for Republican lawmakers, he christened the event the “Rose Garden Club,” a nod to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach.
Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, one of the lawmakers who attended, said that beforehand: “We went into the Oval Office and we talked to the president at length. He was showing us around: the portraits he’d hung and the renovation he had in there, gold leaf, and he’s very proud of it. And it was absolutely beautiful.”
One Republican senator, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely about the president, said: “He’s very proud of the gold in his office and he’ll hold an extensive tutorial on gold plate.”
“He talks about whatever he wants to,” the senator added. “He’s the president.”
Personal pursuits can provide an escape from the job’s pressures and disappointments. When a reporter asked Trump how he was holding up following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a friend and political ally, the president invoked the ballroom.
“I think very good,” Trump said. “And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.”
“It will get done very nicely, and it will be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually,” he added.
Spectator sports appear to have commanded more of Trump’s time this term. By this point in 2017, Trump had attended one event: the U.S. Women’s Open golf championship, which was held at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
So far this year, he’s been to the Daytona 500 NASCAR race, the Super Bowl, two UFC mixed martial arts events, a college wrestling championship, the men’s U.S. Open tennis finals and the FIFA World Cup soccer finals, among other contests.
Next year, he will open the White House grounds to a UFC mixed martial arts match, tied to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
“We’re going to have a UFC fight, think of this, on the grounds of the White House,” Trump announced in July.
“Dana’s going to do it,” he said of his friend, Dana White, the UFC chief executive who, at Trump’s invitation, spoke at the 2024 Republican nominating convention in Milwaukee.
With North America hosting the World Cup next year, soccer seems to have captured Trump’s interest. Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, has attended each of six events Trump has held involving professional soccer. By contrast, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t spoken to Trump once since the inauguration on Jan. 20, a Schumer spokesman said.
Infantino was with the president in the Oval Office last month when he announced that the 2026 World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
After giving Trump the gold trophy to hold (“Can I keep it?” Trump joked, admiring the gold design), Infantino mentioned the drawing at the Kennedy Center.
“Or the Trump Kennedy Center,” as Infantino put it.
For now, Trump is chairman of the center and is using it to fulfill his own aesthetic vision. He said he was “very involved” in choosing who would receive Kennedy Center honors this year. (The winners include Sylvester Stallone, who, after the 2024 election, called Trump “the second George Washington.”)
Breaking tradition, Trump will personally host the awards ceremony in December. Will he host a future ceremony and announce himself a winner from a pool of candidates he helped to cull? It’s not out of the question. Trump drew a laugh from the crowd at an appearance last month when he said he had wanted the award, waited in vain and then decided, “The hell with it, I’ll become chairman and I’ll give myself an honor.”
For a president who relishes excess, the British made sure he wouldn’t leave the U.K. feeling underwhelmed. They treated him to the largest military ceremony for a visiting leader in living memory, complete with 1,300 military personnel and 200 horses.
For the first time, they gave a visiting world leader a musical performance of “Beating Retreat,” a military ceremony dating to the 17th century.
He was shown documents about American independence in the Green Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, eliciting a “Wow!”
Past presidents got one state visit; Trump can now say he’s the first to have gotten two.
“Are you enjoying it? Are you having a good time?” Trump asked pool reporters as he, the king, Queen Camilla and first lady Melania Trump inspected the artifacts laid out in the drawing room.
He seemed to answer his own question that night, standing beside the king at a 164-foot-long banquet table in the castle, saying in his toast: “This is truly one of the highest honors of my life.”
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