There’s no reason to assume Donald Trump is interested in advice from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, but the South Dakota Republican recently offered a public suggestion to the president anyway. “I’d stay focused on … the economic issues, pocketbook issues that most Americans care about,” the GOP leader said.
It was a reasonable recommendation, though there’s little to suggest the man in the Oval Office was persuaded. The Washington Post reported:
For decades, U.S. presidents have stood, waved and boarded Marine One — the call sign of whichever helicopter is transporting the president — as they prepared to depart the South Lawn of the White House.
Now President Donald Trump is planning to alter that iconic image by building a permanent helipad, perhaps as early as this summer, according to three people familiar with the issue, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House planning.
Although MS NOW has not independently verified the reporting, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times published nearly identical reports about the president’s helipad ambitions. What’s more, the White House made no effort to deny the accuracy of the reporting, with a spokesperson telling the Times, in reference to the possible plans for a helipad, “President Trump has continued to make improvements at the White House and all around D.C. to benefit future presidents and Americans.”
Time will tell what becomes of these plans, but it’s the larger context that’s of particular interest: Amid widespread concerns about the struggling economy, a deadly and destabilizing war that has not gone according to the White House’s plans and a burgeoning global energy crisis, recent polling has found two-thirds of Americans are convinced their increasingly unpopular president simply has the wrong priorities.
Trump could take steps to change their mind, but he apparently doesn’t want to.
On the contrary, he seems intent on meandering from one distraction to the next. When he’s not talking to officials about a possible White House helipad, he’s focused on the construction of a White House venue for an upcoming UFC fight. And obsessing over the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. And on Tuesday morning, he held a weird press conference related to his ballroom vanity project.
All of this, of course, dovetails with the president’s crusade to build a “triumphal arch,” his desire to turn the Eisenhower Executive Office Building into a giant white blob, his stated interest in renovating the White House Treaty Room, his specific marble and paint preferences for the Kennedy Center, his plans for a “statue garden” and the dozen or so other renovation projects Trump has prioritized in and around the White House complex.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush’s re-election team put together an attack ad targeting then-Sen. John Kerry, which featured a memorable seven-word phrase about the Democratic candidate: “Kerry has his priorities; are they yours?”
More than two decades later, as the incumbent president fixates on trivialities and distractions, he has opened the door to the same question: Trump has his priorities; are they yours?
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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