Trump’s temper tantrum

0:00DC's hottest club Friday night was the protest at the John F. Donald J. Trump Kennedy Memorial Center and I had to go. It had everything. Boomers with signs. I too have a dream. Re-open under new management. Boomers and t-shirts that said Lake Ontario. You do something worthwhile then you can start getting memorials. Boomers in a marching band playing Bob Marley and the White Stripes. There were chance. And speeches. Music and the arts is how we actually survive. And passionate booing. We're gonna tell you how and why the president threw a big old Kennedy Center's size temper tantrum on today explain from Fox. If you're looking to hire you need indeed. With

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2:05that's it. Powering how business gets done for companies around the globe. When you add it all up no one does business like Comcast business go to Comcast business dot com slash enterprise to learn more. Mr. President do you have any reaction to today's late being the best news show? Wow. I didn't know that I just tell you me now for the first time. Sean Robbins from here with Jonathan Edwards from the Washington Post who's been writing all about the president and the candy center lately and it sure seems like the president is trying to shut the center down or worse simply because he can't get his name on it. But we ask Jonathan if there's a smoking gun that proves it. No smoking gun but I I understand your concern or interest in the timeline. I have a lot of those same questions you have. The order that comes out Tuesday morning from the

3:09judge saying you cannot add President Trump's name back on the building. I was very clear about this in May and I'm being clear now do not do this. And then almost immediately the board of trustees holds its meeting in which you know our reporting shows President Trump was very unhappy with that ruling criticized the judge and then the board ends up voting to close immediately shortly after that meeting President Trump posts on true social saying that the building is going to close immediately. The board of the Kennedy Center today agreed almost unanimously to close the building for safety reasons and so that it can begin the process of reconstruction. The closing will take place immediately however the renovation and reconstruction which is a very large and complex job cannot begin until such time as the DC circuit rules on the boards approved

4:09name. And then following that you have the executive director Matt Flokka who was handpicked by Trump to lead the Kennedy Center saying I don't know anything about that that's unrelated to the the boards vote to close for two years. But by the way I am also closing the center because it is dangerous. This order of mine has also has nothing to do with the boards vote to close for two years because that needs the judges approval. My order is because there are these imminent life safety issues and we're going to close for seven days to everyone but essential personnel and I will make a decision at the end of that seven days whether that closure needs to continue and I'll keep making that decision every week on a rolling basis. So essentially an indefinite closure. Tell us more about this meeting that transpired between President Trump and I believe the

5:14Kennedy Center trustees on the Tuesday between a judge saying no name and the center shutting down. It was a previously scheduled board meeting like you said of the board of trustees, the governing body of the Kennedy Center. And at first they were set to discuss two issues one to once again take up adding President Trump's name back onto the Kennedy Center and two to vote to close immediately. They had already voted to close for two years of renovations the month before but management at ahead of this meeting was now recommending that they do so immediately that it was dangerous and they needed to close. At the end of that meeting they removed the naming consideration from the agenda but the judges order came right before the meeting started essentially barring the center from adding

6:15the name and that seems to have kind of kicked off a really like tense meeting filled with personal insults between President Trump who's the chair of the Kennedy Center board and the representative Joyce Baydie, a Democratic congresswoman who is part of the minority on the board that opposes Trump's takeover and transformation to the Kennedy Center but she's also the person who sued him back in December and led to his name being removed six months later. This administration cannot just because they want to put Donald Trump's name on a building so what's next? Lincoln Memorial, I mean it's just not legal and it's simple. We have it in the statue is in the congressional statues clearly defining how you have to go about a name, Jay.

7:18These are two people that do not like each other that much is clear but my reporting shows that there are exchanges at board meetings in the past have largely been pretty civil. Let's just get this done. This meeting was not that. I mean let me just make it simple. It was the most unprofessional thing that I've ever witnessed. It opened with a commerce secretary, Lutnik, suggesting that the judge had a conflict of interest because his wife, a lawyer, represents former presidential Biden, President Trump reiterated that and that's something he said in months past publicly and true social posts and very Trumpian nasty language. And Trump repeatedly told Baydie that, oh I don't know who she is when he clearly does know who she is. Insulted her by saying she was,

8:20had never built anything in her life. Everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb. He said, I think you're incompetent and I said I know you're incompetent. Wow. That she was just opposing him on the Kennedy Center renovations and his name stuff to make a name for herself. For her part, she called the ignorant and said what he was doing was ignorant and his behavior was unbefitting of being a president. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming. It was it was not productive. He said he was going to hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling and killed someone. And I said, you're already killing people where it were. The anxieties people feel over what's going to happen to the Kennedy Center hit like the red alert alarm level when a photo is published. I believe last week Wednesday night, Tuesday night,

9:26of the president looking at a plan that appears to say Kennedy Center demolish than it's cut off. What are we to make of that? Is the president seriously considering demolition at this point? I can't get in President Trump's mind. That said, I know that the lawyers representing represented Badi and Badi herself are absolutely worried about this and are taking steps to know that if the bulldozers do show up, that they know as quickly as possible and that they're in a position to stop it. This is the most pitched moment of those fears, but it long predates this week. It really goes all the way back to October 20th of last year when the Trump administration suddenly and with no notice demolished the East Wing of the White House. That caught a lot of people off guard, including those at the Kennedy Center. At that point, the Kennedy Center takeover was

10:30already seven months in. The folks who were specifically concerned with the Kennedy Center, this was a clarion call for them to go, oh, this could happen over here. Obviously, we don't have bulldozers destroying the Kennedy Center right now. But if we were assessing the probability of the Kennedy Center being demolished, we went from a very low percentage earlier this month and it's ticking higher and higher and higher. Those fears are starting to prove warranted. And do we have any idea where where the battle goes next? We do. Court, which is where most of the substantive action has happened since Baydie filed their lawsuit in December. The federal judge in the case denied Baydie's motion to have an emergency hearing on Tuesday's closure, but he did order the center to file an explanation, a detailed status report

11:34as he put it, to explain what the center had described as a temporary closure by Wednesday. So we should know more about the center's rationale. And from there, who knows what the judge decides and what legal development's unfold? The thing that has struck me is how strongly President Trump and his administration has made the connection between, I mean, let's keep it real. Him getting his name on the center and him and his fellow trustees making sure that the $250 sum odd million that Congress has appropriated for those renovations happens. Congress has already appropriated that money. Congress has already said, here, we're giving you the money, do this. And President Trump is saying, we're going to close it for two years for renovations, but we're not going to do those renovations until you appropriately recognize me and I don't

12:37know why I'm surprised. I should not be, but here we are. I am. And I'm sure I will be surprised. Again. John, the Edwards keeps being surprised reporting on the arts and government for the Washington Post and up next on today's sprained. We're going to hear from a reporter who sat down with the president and asked him why he keeps doing stuff like this. Why, though? Support for the show day comes from found for all those of you feeling lost. Found gives business owners one place for banking, bookkeeping and contractor payments was found. All your businesses moving parts can finally work together. It auto categorizes your expenses, captures receipts, come here receipts and lets you see what you're earning, spending and saving. You have visibility

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16:47Trump came in like a wreck. Today's plan is back. We've got the Kennedy Center obsession, the ballroom obsession, the reflecting pool obsession. And then there's some more recent obsessions, a 30 foot colossus statue of George Washington outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. And hot off the presses. Let's also make that arch outside Arlington National Cemetery, a sniper station drone base. Take that Paris. Ben Terris is the Washington correspondent at New York magazine. He recently sat down with the president to talk about his obsessions. We asked him what he learned. Yeah, I mean, so before I even talk to him, I did a lot of reporting about why he seems to be so obsessed with all this stuff. And it's it's really like a legacy play for him, right? He's trying to build something that will last beyond his time here, both this time here in the White House, probably his time here on earth. He wants to actually have physical monuments to himself.

17:51Somebody who's close to him told me that the president doesn't care that much about legislation. He doesn't care that much about the kind of nuts and bolts of being a president. He cares a lot about buildings and prizes. If he has buildings and prizes, then he feels like his legacy will go on forever. That's why he wants a Nobel Prize. That's why he's building an arch for himself in Washington. It's really about a legacy that will withstand the test of time in his mind. Which is to say he doesn't really realize that the right legislation could get him more prizes. Yeah, I mean, most presidents try to be very successful presidents and have other people build monuments for you. He's trying to honor himself, basically. It's something I asked him about actually when I sat down with him in the Oval Office. There was a viral moment from a few months ago from Senator John Assoff, the senator from Georgia, who made run for president. He said at a rally that he's building a monument to himself. But see, Atlanta, he's doing these things now because no one will honor him when he's gone. I asked the president this because I thought maybe he'd take a shot at

18:55a John Assoff or deny it. But I was very surprised. He just said, yeah, that's true. Nobody will do it when I'm gone. When I'm gone, nobody will do it. It's nice to hear the future and current president agree on something. Yeah, good point. It feels kind of self-aware, surprisingly, of Donald Trump to not take a shot at John Assoff, but to just agree with him and say, yeah, that's exactly my motivation. Yeah, I mean, so part of me thought, okay, here's a guy who recognizes that when he's gone, history may not necessarily look fondly upon him. But also, there was a part of me that thought that that's not actually what he was saying, what he was maybe saying is, I'm the only person in the world capable of building something as beautiful and important as these monuments. I alone can fix it, I alone can build it. Nobody else has the ability to do this the way that he has. So on the one hand, possibly self-aware, that he won't be recognized the way he wants to be. On the other hand, maybe it's just a kind of ego maniac talking about how he's incredible at things and nobody else can do it.

19:56I think it's all kind of tied up in that he's not the most introspective person I've ever talked to. Let's put it that way. But even the least introspective person in the world, when he gets to be 80 years old, might start thinking about what's left of him after he's gone. And just to prove to the world how much he's wasting time obsessing over this ballroom and showing it off, he takes the time out of his day to give you a tour of the ballroom. Yeah, that's right. I thought I was going to get 20 minutes with him in the Oval Office, ended up getting 45 minutes in the Oval Office, and then almost a 45-minute tour of the White House grounds. He showed me the Rose Garden where they put statues and they turned it into a kind of paved-over terrace that looks like, you know, Mar-a-Laga. He showed me the presidential walk of fame where they have all the pictures of the presidents and then the auto pen for Joe Biden. A room called the Palm Room where he put down a new marble floor that he was very proud of. The hella pad was still being constructed. He walked me over there and introduced me to the construction workers as they were building this hella pad. And then he took me to the ballroom

20:57itself and showed me this behemoth building. I mean, it's, you know, there's steel rising 70 feet in the air. It's the size of one and a half football fields. He was bragging about how there's more steel there than in the Washington Commander Stadium that's being built. I mean, it's just like this enormous thing that you can't really see anywhere in Washington unless you go up the Washington monument and look at it from afar. And I was just in the middle of this thing and I couldn't really believe how huge it was. And he wanted to show me this is where the entrance is going to be. The Shandit leaders will be hanging here. He told me he could picture it all already because this is quote, what I do, you know, he'll gaze out the window in the morning, first thing in the morning from the residents to see the work. He'll look out the window at last thing at night to see the work. I mean, he he is monitoring this very closely. One thing that the ballroom especially shares with the Kennedy Center is that it feels like this administration is doing its darn just to outmaneuver the courts to get around any legal

22:00questions concerning the work. Did that come up at all while he was giving you this tour? Yeah, sure. When I was getting the tour, the Supreme Court had not yet ruled that they could keep going. There was kind of a pause on the ruling where there were a lot to keep doing construction while the the Supreme Court figured out, you know, how they were going to rule on it. And so clearly they were racing against the Supreme Court to get as much done as possible. They really wanted to become like a fatal complete. They wanted it to look like the whole thing was done, you know, was beyond going back. And I was asking the president about this, you know, are you worried that the Supreme Court is going to rule that you can't keep doing construction unless you get permission from Congress? Congress does have the right to decide what happens to federal buildings, so that would make sense that they they would be able to make a decision on this. And he said he wasn't worried about it at all. He said, you know, the Supreme Court's going to make the right decision. The people want this. He's like, if I needed to get Congress's approval, I could do it, but it's not going to happen. And he ended up being right. He doesn't need Congress's approval. They Supreme Court's letting them do it. But Congress may get shaken up in about a month and a half.

23:08Is that on his radar? Yeah, I mean, he's aware. And certainly Democrats are aware. I talked to a bunch of Democrats for the story, mostly about what happens next, or they're going to start investigating the ballroom. Are they going to start looking at, you know, subpoenaing donors and looking at the contracts and figuring out if there's a pay to play scheme, if there was, you know, a legal construction happening. And Democrats are champion at the bit for that. You know, they they're calling it a target rich environment. They're ready to get subpoena power. And they're also talking about in 2028, you know, what do we do if we get the White House ourselves? Will we tear this down? Will the AOC says she wants to turn it into a soup kitchen? You know, there's all sorts of ideas for it. I asked the president about that too. I said, are you worried that Democrats get the White House in 2028 and they come and they tear down this this ballroom right after you built it? And he basically said like, I'd like to see them try. You said, we're building this ballroom with nuclear concrete. That's what he called it, nuclear concrete concrete that can withstand a nuclear blast. He's like,

24:09if you can withstand a nuclear blast, like I'd like to see Democrats try to take it down. He told me somebody could go to the ballroom with a jackhammer and spend two days straight jackhammering one column and it wouldn't even leave a mark. And so he's basically daring them to try to tear it down because he's building something that he feels like, you know, can withstand a nuclear blast, so it can withstand Democrats. I think it was Axel Rod in your piece in your reporting who said the Democrats should name it after John F. Kennedy, which I guess I hadn't considered who the ballroom might be named after because we always just say it's the White House ballroom. But I guess President Trump wants it to be named after himself. Of course, connecting it back to the Kennedy Center, I guess. Yeah, I asked him if it should have his name on it. And he said, yeah, it should. He said, I don't know if it will, but it definitely should. And yeah, I mean, the Axel Rod idea, just instead of tearing it down, just troll the president by naming it after JFK or name it after Barack Obama or Joe Biden or the auto pan or whatever you want. The Joe Biden ballroom would be particularly funny.

25:11I mean, this at the end of the day, all of this is just about his legacy. That's what you learned by hanging out with him and talking to him about it. Do you think by spreading his efforts across DC even into Virginia with the arch, he's ensuring that at least something stands and that his legacy is ultimately secured. I mean, the Kennedy Center looks less and less likely. The ballroom seems like an obvious way to troll him, but maybe it's the arch. Maybe it's who knows some project that I'm forgetting about at this moment because there's so many. I think that he definitely thinks that these buildings can withstand more than anything else. Legislation can be rolled back. Executive orders can be reversed. This is something that he feels like can last forever. I do think there's a world in which Democrats tear down some of the stuff. The arch is a good example. I mean, the ballroom is hard to tear down. First of all, it's super expensive. It's huge. It also has to be replaced with something. You can't just tear it down and then leave a hole in the ground. You have

26:14to then build another ballroom, which would be kind of a crazy thing to do and take all this time and then become another story about how Democrats are spending all their time building a ballroom. Is it possible? Sure. It just seems a little bit harder to imagine. But the arch, you could see that thing getting dynamited on some fourth of July and then just leaving it as a traffic circle. So I could see a world in which maybe some of these things get destroyed in a kind of, I don't know, epic fashion. Why not? I just, it feels like he might be onto something which is that it would be very controversial to just tear something down for the sake of it out of spite. Yeah, he's right. No, absolutely. There's also two years left in his term. I mean, do you get the sense that this is slowing down or ramping up? It's hard to say. I have a hard time believing it's going to end. I mean, especially if he becomes a lame duck president and there's even fewer things he can do legislatively. Why not just keep building things and and putting your name on things because there's nothing else to do with your time? He said that in the first

27:16term, the reason he didn't do a lot of this stuff is because he was too under siege, that it was a difficult time to, you know, build a ballroom because of the Russian investigations or the impeachment trials and stuff like that. And so maybe he gets tied up in all that same kind of stuff if Democrats take charge, but I also kind of feel like he'll have an easier time just trying to ignore subpoenas. I just think it's going to be a really messy time. And so maybe he'll just hold himself off into a room somewhere, you know, designing more buildings because what else is he going to do? You'll have more time to talk to you. Yeah, very. You can read Inside Trump's Ballroom Obsession at nymag.com. Dustin DeSoto and Avi Shai Archie produced this one for today, explained Amnal Saudi edited, Bridger Donigan and David Tadashore mixed. Danielle Hewitt was on Facts with Welcome Back Gabriel Donatov.

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