“Now envision chandeliers all over.”
President Trump and his party had just suffered one of the most brutal defeats in modern political history, but when the president emerged before the cameras for the first time, what he wanted to talk to the public about was … home renovation.
“Envision marble floor,” he said. “Oh, it’s going to be beautiful.”
A surreal scene played out on Wednesday as the president led reporters through the White House ballroom to inspect its progress. He pointed out beams, talked about varieties of marble and generally shrugged off what had happened the night before as though it wasn’t the bloodiest political blood bath in this country since 1976 — as though he hadn’t just seen Texas turn blue.
Inside his concrete chrysalis, everything was still beautiful.
“Did you guys see the helipad from up top, how beautiful that is?” he asked.
“The marble is really magnificent marble.”
“It’s a vein that people have been after for 50 years, and the owner of the quarry didn’t want to sell it, but he liked me.”
No malaise. Just marble.
At one point, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stepped forward and said, “Today, of course, is a day of celebration, and it’s a day of gratitude.”
It was a mirror image of the event that Mr. Burgum and Mr. Trump held the day before the elections, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where Mr. Trump stood inside a plexiglass box and rambled about rusty drainpipes and algae. Many Republicans were frustrated verging on apoplectic that Mr. Trump used his closing message to talk about his pet construction projects. Now the blue crush they feared had come to pass, and Mr. Trump and Mr. Burgum were back at it.
“We’re upgrading trash island,” Mr. Trump informed the press (trash island is what he calls the public golf course on the Potomac River where he dumped rubble from the East Wing).
He was clutching a microphone as he wandered around inside the soaring skeleton of the ballroom. Every so often, the audio feedback from the mike would go haywire, and a cacophonous, screeching sound would go ringing off the massive beams inside the site.
“See the thickness and size of that steel?” he asked as he edged closer to the reporters. He decided to take a few questions.
He didn’t snap at anyone or growl. He didn’t call anybody stupid, fat or ugly. He was placid. He said he wasn’t upset that his vice president was sermonizing on social media about their defeat. He said he didn’t regret going to war with Iran. He said he wouldn’t dump Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And he defended the speech he gave at the Reflecting Pool on Monday.
“I heard it was a very good speech, got great reviews,” he said. “That was a speech very much like this is today.”
And so it was.
“Watch the beam go up!” Mr. Trump said all of a sudden, cutting off the questions for a time. He ambled toward another corner of the construction site, came to a stop and pointed up to a hole in the ceiling.
The place grew quiet. The reporters stared. A great beam was rising, up through the ballroom, lifted by one of the cranes that has encircled the White House for months. The beam got closer to the hole, but the crane operator couldn’t quite get it out. It was like a game of “Operation,” as the beam kept dinging other pieces of the building’s frame.
Mr. Trump turned and said to no one in particular: “The entire building, every single hole was perfect, which is rare. But we had great people.” The beam made it through the hole. Construction workers clapped.
“Great stuff, right?” the president asked.
He outlined his thinking on the floor plan.
“The kitchen is underneath,” he explained, “because if I put the kitchen on top, and we have large staircases coming from the kitchen, if I put the kitchen on top, you would lose three walls because the kitchen takes about 30 percent of the space.”
Many Republicans inside the Trump administration woke up on Wednesday profoundly depressed, worrying about legal exposure as Democrats contemplate how they will use their new powers on Capitol Hill. Recriminations have already begun. Questions are swirling about who will leave the administration — and what kind of people will be left to take jobs inside going forward.
One close ally of the president working inside the government watched Wednesday’s ballroom tour and concluded that the president was clearly shaken. Another administration official suggested that the president eat a pint of ice cream next time instead of leading a televised tour through a space that for many has become a symbol of why the Grand Old Party went kersplat.
So Republicans looking to the leader of the party on Wednesday to soothe their anxieties might not have been reassured by the ballroom tour. But then, other people’s anxieties might not have been the point.
“It was sort of mentioned a little bit during the campaign: Why does Trump spend time on the White House?” the president said into the microphone, his voice echoing through the construction site. “Well, first of all, it’s very little time. Second of all, I like it. It’s good. For me, it’s relaxing.”
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