WASHINGTON — As they walked through the bowels of the Kennedy Center, President Donald 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.”Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.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 outsize energy to giving Washington its biggest face-lift 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.Today he celebrates a birthday and thus joins 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.For a former real estate developer, Trump’s projects are a kind of “therapy,” said Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker.For him, perhaps, but Republican lawmakers are bristling over Trump’s persistent focus on Washington’s decor when so many Americans are uneasy about the nation’s path.The war that T...