As they walked through the bowels of the Kennedy Center, Trump asked Sen. Lindsey Graham his opinion on something that might mean a lot one day to an audience sitting through three hours of Les Mis.
Try out some of the new seats being considered for the building’s renovation, Trump told the South Carolina Republican. Graham obliged, plunking himself down in different chairs and telling Trump which one he liked best.
“He couldn’t make up his mind,” Graham said of the president, recounting a trip to the performing arts center earlier this year.
“I don’t know which one he [ultimately] picked, but only in America would I be picking the seats for the Kennedy Center,” laughed Graham, a Trump ally.
Facing one of the roughest patches of his second term, Trump is devoting outsized energy to giving Washington its biggest facelift in living memory. He is punctuating his public appearances with long digressions about the ballroom he’s building at the White House, the resurfacing of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, a 250-foot arch he hopes to build near the Lincoln Memorial and fountains that his administration is repairing across the city.
Yesterday, he celebrated a birthday, and thus joined an 80-or-above age group in which only 6% are employed, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. With no more races to run and the clock ticking on his final term, Trump wants to cement a legacy that includes remaking Washington in keeping with his personal aesthetic, people close to him say.