WASHINGTON — President Trump had something urgent to address while flying back to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago estate on a recent Sunday.
It wasn’t the Iran war, nor the partial government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding. He was focused on a monumental issue of a different kind, hoisting artist renderings of the $400-million White House ballroom he’s building, complete with hand-carved “top-of-the-line” Corinthian columns.
“I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this. I’m fighting wars and other things,” Trump said before extensively detailing plans for “the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world.”
His divided attention has become a Democratic point of attack and a concern for some Republicans who worry he’s not spending enough time on issues that voters care most about ahead of November’s midterm races.
The contrast was on full display Thursday, when, as Trump flew to Las Vegas to discuss tax cuts for Americans earning tips, his administration was pushing ahead with another of his splashy projects: Plans to build a 250-foot Triumphal Arch near the Lincoln Memorial replete with a Lady Liberty-like statue and a pair of golden eagles.
The president’s ability to speak to the concerns of working people has always seemed incongruous with his biography as a billionaire real estate developer. Yet his populist policies and emphasis on the economy during his 2024 campaign helped catapult him back to the White House.
Republican strategist Rick Tyler noted that, when Trump first ran for president in 2016, his wealth was a selling point.
“While other people, like Mitt Romney, played down how rich he was, Trump was giving free helicopter rides at the Iowa State Fair,” Tyler said. “People loved it.”
Still, Trump’s preoccupation with some of the gilded trappings of the presidency, as more Americans worry about bills, has drawn accusations that he’s a modern-day Marie Antoinette.
“ ‘Fighting wars’ and surging gas prices, yet Trump has time to brag about his billionaire backed ballroom,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) responded on X to Trump’s Air Force One presentation.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, has been more direct in comparing Trump to the last queen before the French Revolution, who has come to embody extravagant opulence — even posting an AI-generated image of Trump’s face on her body on social media.
“TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!’” Newsom wrote in October 2025, at the start of last fall’s 43-day government shutdown.
White House says Trump’s success benefits all Americans
Asked about opponents invoking Marie Antoinette, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump “is going to go down in history as the most successful and consequential president in our lifetime.”
“His successes on behalf of the American people will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and will be felt by every other White House that comes after him,” Ingle said in a statement.
The president faced similar critiques during his first term. But lately he’s been unabashed about accusations he’s disconnected from Americans’ worries about high costs, which could leave Republicans with an uphill battle to retain control of Congress.
Republicans have been loath to question Trump, though notably there has been little criticism of a federal judge’s ruling that work on the project must stop until it has congressional approval. The GOP-controlled House and Senate also haven’t prioritized legislation to move the ballroom project forward.
“I’m not much into architecture,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said last fall.
About two-thirds of Americans said Trump is “out of touch” with the concerns of most people in the United States today, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from February, though the same percentage said the same about the Democratic Party.
Presidents are usually removed from voters, separated by layers of security and surrounded by adoring subordinates. In her book “Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again,” Elaine Kamarck argues that presidents get too focused on their own political narratives rather than the public’s concerns. Yet, when it comes to Trump, “All of this stuff is frankly unique to him.”
She pointed to the ballroom as well as Trump’s other White House renovations, soon adding his signature to paper currency and renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.
“It’s a reflection, I think, of his own background as a businessman and somebody who made his fortune selling his name,” said Kamarck, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House.
While Trump focuses on the ballroom and other Washington projects, some public work projects in other parts of the country have languished.
Joe Meyer, the former mayor of Covington, Ky., spent years pushing for critical improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge connecting his town with Cincinnati, a project listed as a top federal priority dating back to Trump’s first administration.
Federal funds for improvements were approved under President Biden but held up by a Trump-ordered review. Work is finally set to begin later this year, though delays will likely limit design options and slow the project, Meyer said.
“The ballroom is Washington inside-baseball,” Meyer said. “The bridge is just a wreck. It’s frustration that we’ve been dealing with forever.”
A $100 tip and a golden tractor
Trumpeting new tax deductions for tips, Trump staged ordering McDonald’s to the Oval Office — which he has adorned with gold flourishes — and tipped the grandmother making the delivery $100. When she described large medical bills from her husband’s cancer treatments, Trump said she should bring him to an upcoming UFC fight on the White House lawn.
When hundreds of farmers were invited to the White House for an agricultural policy speech, they stood on the South Lawn beside a tractor that had been painted gold. It drizzled, but Trump stayed dry, addressing them from a covered second-floor balcony.
“You don’t mind rain,” the president told the farmers below.
He then flew to Miami for a conference of Saudi investors who, the president noted, were too rich to be impressed by U.S. families scrounging to save up $5,000.
“I know they’re looking like, ‘What the hell is $5,000?’ ” Trump joked. “Their shoes cost them more than $5,000.”
When asked in February, meanwhile, for his message to young people wanting to buy a home, Trump replied: “Save a little longer. Wait a little longer.”
Members of the Cabinet have also fed the perception that Trump’s promised “Golden Age” may not be arriving for everyone. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. advised Americans to buy liver instead of beef.
“If you go and buy a steak, it’s still pretty expensive. But if you buy the cheaper cuts, it’s great meat. And it is very, very affordable. Or liver, or, you know, all these alternatives,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said people could still afford meals consisting of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla and one other thing.”
Texas-based Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser said he thinks that Trump “can kind of get away with” building a ballroom because voters have come to expect that from him as a brash dealmaker and businessman.
But Steinhauser said he worries that dramatic increases in gas prices and a potentially weakening economy could resonate with voters. Ahead of the midterms, Steinhauser said, Democrats could score points “trying to make it more about Trump and his oligarch friends.”
Price and Weissert write for the Associated Press. AP writers Linley Sanders in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
