All the while, uh, just before the the new debt record was, uh, was announced, President Trump, uh, embarked on a little tour of the White House where he took reporters around the grounds to showcase some of the new, uh, renovations and upgrades that he has been pursuing.

And to be clear, uh, the renovations are not what's fueling the national debt, but of course, the optics are there.

Let's just give, uh, give viewers a little glimpse of where where he took us.

This is the highest quality stone you can get.

This is pure white granite.

Very high quality.

This grass is the highest quality.

This is a great pole.

This is the top of the line.

I'm very good at flag pulse.

A lot of times I get criticism and then when they see the final product, they say that was great.

I've got a long list in front of me of just some of the renovations that are taking place, not just for the White House, but around DC.

You've got the ballroom which of course the Supreme Court today ruled that at the Trump administration can continue construction on uh Rose Garden makeover, the new helellipad he was just talking about the executive uh Eisenhower executive building.

I mean the list goes on and on.

Not to mention the reflecting pool which Matt Viser has a PhD in the algae condition of that.

We'll get to that in a second.

But um Zolan, what um what is the president actually trying to accomplish here?

I mean is it aesthetic or is this a political effort here?

I mean he's he's made comments about this and said that at times he thinks he is more of a builder than actually a politician.

Uh he now in this period where he's cementing his legacy clearly this is where he what he wants to focus on reflecting pool.

It's a happy place.

And also we saw like like little sprinkles of this in term one with the border wall focus as well.

like he wanted to talk about something that is tangible and that he could build and now you're seeing that translation to the ballroom and the reflecting pool.

But again, I think it's worth emphasizing like you campaigned on addressing the cost of living and daily issues of voters.

It was his thing.

It of course it was his main sort of driving issue that and immigration.

And now I you do hear these concerns from Republicans quietly of, you know, we really could use a consistent strategy from the White House.

We really could use a consistent message to address these economic concerns.

And when you have a president focusing on the gold in the Oval Office or the ballroom, that that isn't exactly the empathetic tone that you might expect you would have in a midterm year for voters that many of which are struggling.

Just to be clear, Mary Louise, you know, renovating the White House is not unprecedented.

Other presidents have.

President Truman rebuilt the interior partly because it was falling apart out of necessity.

FDR made uh many renovations both to the inside and to the vicinity of the White House.

So, why is President Trump's remodeling getting so much blowback even amounting to legal challenges like we said going to the Supreme Court?

It's a great question.

I mean, I think the legal challenges are are one piece.

If we just look at public opinion, I have to wonder if it has to do with these are real things you can see, you can touch.

Most of us will never, you know, most of us are not at the White House every day.

I'm not at the White House every day.

But my morning jog takes me past the Kennedy Center, which has been tarped and, you know, is behind massive fences to this day.

We can't verify what is on the wall, uh, what name is written on the wall.

And then I keep going and I jog as close as the National Guard will let you to the reflecting pool.

And I think it's the so many norms are broken every day in this country.

We're in a moment where I know on air I'm often struggling, you know, talking about the uncharted waters we find ourselves in here.

A norm that has never been tested in the courts before here.

You can go to the edge of the reflecting pool and look and see it and it looks really weird.

And I think it's something that is just tangible with all of the changes and and stresses that we're seeing on the system right now of you can look and say this is whether you love the changes or not, they're unusual.

We haven't seen anything like this.

I think it's also the degree to which this president focuses almost on a daily basis to his renovation projects.

Not a day really goes by that he doesn't talk about the ballroom or the reflecting pool or the Kennedy Center or the gold statues.

He had done so tonight.

Yeah.

And tonight, you know, this is a good example where just before we came on, he's in South Carolina campaigning for uh Darlene Graham who who has said her number one issue is affordability.

This is the sister of course of the late Graham in the special election that's on Tuesday.

and she talks about affordability and she does use the word affordability which President Trump calls a Democratic hoax.

Um, but he gets there and he opens the rally by talking about the ballroom and he devotes several minutes to talking about his project.

Um, so I I I just don't know that it resonates as deeply with voters across the country.

We see it on our daily commutes and every day, but like it's not the things the pocketbook issues that I think the midterms are probably going to be.

just saying, you know, it's his thing.

Obviously, he comes from that background as a real estate uh you know, real estate uh person and a you know, a builder in general.

Does he see this though as governing or or you know, is it just some passion project for him?

I I think it's a part of what he views as his legacy and and monuments and things that he's building are harder to take down than executive orders that can be changed by the next president.

Well, maybe we'll see.

Legacy is one thing and sort of the obligation of the of the job is another.

And so, you know, I'm wondering where there's is there any overlap there?

I think this is an example of him doing something because he can.

It's an example of the difference between Trump one and Trump two, which is he's surrounded himself and designed an administration based off of people that will say yes and do what he wants.

Disscent is not embraced.

And when that happens, then your impulses and wishes as a president are going to be pursued.

Also, there's a question about the funding for these projects as well.

You literally took the words out of my mouth.

So, talk a little bit about where the money is coming from for these things.

Well, I think there's a question about it.

What we were told initially is that this was mainly going to be funded by private donations and the president's own uh giving.

We have seen that there's a good amount of money that's been transferred from the Secret Service budget to fund the ballroom as he's changed his argument to basically say this is a national security imperative pointing to the bunker that would be under the ballroom.

That's taxpayer money, right?

So, so we've also seen a shifting explanation in terms of the need for this ballroom going from we want to host bigger groups for social events to it's a national security imperative and also a shift in terms of this is going to be 100% private donations to now we're taking from the Secret Service and the private donations are controversial as well.

Yes.

Um because what are you buying?

Mhm.

He's also transferred a lot of money like from the National Park Service to pay for g, you know, gilding the statues, you know, next to the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, which has gone up.

These are taxpayer dollars that that he's using a lot of Michelle, how does the White House actually address any questions about the optics of this?

They often describe this as like a user experience that is being improved for everybody.

It's the people's house, so he's making it more beautiful.

And some some of the renovations around DC, there's an argument they make that, you know, this is beautiful for everyone.

Tourists will come and this is this is better for them to look at.

But some of these that's a stretch.

I mean, how many people are going to be going to events at the military complex/Ballroom, which he calls it, or the helellipad this week where he was touring the granite.

You know, the president was speaking about this as a place that might host cocktail parties.

And this is a president who for a long time campaigned on draining the swamp.

And it seems he's paving it and making it glitzier and talking about how people will be enjoying these spaces in a very elite way seems totally divorced from the message he long had about what he was going to do when he got here.

All the while, um, Mayor Louise, the Reuters Ipsis poll that came out this week shows that the president's approval rating is at a record low, 33% approve of the job he's doing.

Obviously, we are two months away from early voting starting in certain states.

Um the president has to take that on.

JD Vance was on the campaign trail today trying to pitch the economy.

You know the messaging here, you know, is that everything is fine.

Are voters is that resonating with voters at all?

Well, if you stick with the ballroom, the public polling is also showing that a majority of Americans don't think it's a great idea and disapprove of it.

So, that's one tiny slice of this.

I don't know.

You know, between now and the first week of November is an eternity in politics, and we will see what issues stick.

I've been fascinated in a midterm election year by how much focus there has been on foreign policy.

This does tend to happen when you start a war in the Middle East.

Um, but I am curious to see what issues start to resonate and to what extents the white to what extent the White House aligns the messaging with what polling is showing people actually care about, which does usually go back to it costs a dollar more per gallon to fill up my car than it did 6 months ago.

You mentioned war in the Middle East.

Obviously, while the president is building a physical legacy here in Washington, there is another part of the presidency which is much uh much harder to make permanent, and that is uh or much harder to control, I should say, and that is the war in Iran.

Um where does it stand tonight?

Um in particular, because the president has now threatened uh took to social media and threatened economic pain on Iran if it does not comply with his demands.

Well, we know that talks have stalled.

Uh we know that the street of Hormuz is still not operating at anything close to the level that it was before the war.

So the latest is this uh threat of an economic D-Day.

Not a lot of specifics on what that looks like.

It raises two questions in my mind.

One is what would actually change because Iran is already one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world and economic pain has thus far not been effective at causing its leaders to bend to the will of the US because you know they're still going to have gas in their car.

They still have dinner on their table, the the hardline leaders of Iran.

So the pain hits Iranian people and in an autocracy where the supreme leader is not accountable to voters the suffering of the Iranian people is not sadly a very coercive measure to you know get its leaders to to change their behavior.

The other related question is just sanctions in the service of what what is the US goal at this point?

Is it stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?

Is it degrading military, naval, missile capabilities, proxies in the Does it change every week?

Is it supporting protesters and human rights in Iran?

We haven't heard a lot about that.

Is it getting the street of former news back to where it was before the war?

Would we take that at this point?

So, it's it's very hard to gauge how these new sanctions, this economic D-Day might work and would it be effective when we don't know what the specifics are.

um and what they are designed to try to achieve.

And so, uh Michelle, you know, President Trump has basically gone out there and essentially declared the the US as, uh the Straight of Hormuz as US territory.

Um he says that ships are passing through although there's a lot of dispute about that.

I mean, at this point, is the even the the reality on the ground a question?

Yeah.

I mean, I think we've reached a point.

I think there's actually been some numbers to back this up, right?

Where we would see the president make declarations that we're winning the war, the straight is open, we have a deal that you'd even see like the market react thinking, okay, this is happening and there's that the markets are not even reacting now that there's a credibility kind of crisis for these statements and we have heard over and over again that the straight is open, that things are are are moving to normally.

Um, and then we see reality and that the ships aren't getting through or that they get attacked.

And it's kind of hard for you to wish cast for the president to wish cast this to be one way when you have hard facts in the ground and you see images of, you know, a ship being attacked.

So, we have uh less than a minute left.

The president obviously on the one hand threatening economic pain.

On the other hand, there's still talk of of a deal maybe on the distant horizon at this point.

What is what is the hope for that?

I I'm not hearing much momentum as far as the talks right now.

There could always they could always resume.

We could always see that speed back up, but right now it seems like we're in an economic endurance test.

It's gone from a full military assault into an economic tugofwar.

And who's going to feel the pain and who's actually going to give in uh and and I mean, we'll see if the president actually ma uh makes good on this threat to also go after people that are supporting Iran economically.

That would include China.

We haven't seen him take that aggressive approach against China when in the context of this conflict.

Uh so we'll have to see.

But at this point, it seems like we're in an economic endurance test with heightened rhetoric and not a lot of specifics.

Definitely something to to keep watching.

Well, we're going to have to leave it there.

And thank you to our guests for joining me.

And thank you at home for watching.

To read more of Matt's great reporting on Washington's makeover, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Vivian Salama.

Good night from Washington.