Former President Barack Obama had one of the most memorable lines of the midterm campaign when he remarked on President Donald Trump’s obsession with redecorating the Executive Mansion: “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
On Tuesday, voters dealt Trump an epic repudiation and punished his Republican Party with the biggest margin of defeat in half a century.
And Trump, after taking a beat on Wednesday to reflect on that defeat, unveiled his response to the voters’ concerns: more cheesecake.
“Today, of course, is a day of celebration,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced at the White House, with Trump at his side.
Of course! And what were they celebrating? The seven to nine Senate seats Democrats gained? The 45-or-so House seats they’re poised to pick up? The five new governorships or dozen-plus state legislative chambers?
Not exactly. Burgum and Trump had come to celebrate the raising of the final beam in Trump’s new White House ballroom — right after that beam was autographed by the man Burgum called “the greatest builder that has ever been president of the United States.”
The greatest builder imparted some thoughts to the reporters in attendance.
“Envision chandeliers all over your ceiling. Envision marble floors. ... This will be the most beautiful ballroom.”
And: “You can put as many helicopters as you want on the roof. It’s a very powerful ceiling.”
Also: “The marble floor you’ll see, it is the most beautiful marble you’ll ever see. It’s a special vein. This is a vein that everybody wanted for a long time, and I got it.”
What’s more: “The kitchen is all the space that you have right underneath, and it’s going to be top of the line.”
In conclusion: “When I went to China, we went to the Great Hall. It’s called the Great Hall of China, and it’s incredible. But this is actually larger … and it will be the most magnificent when you see what we’re doing between the marbles and the bronzes and all the different things that we’re doing. Top of the line.”
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Reporters had questions — not about the vein of marble but about the election.
Any regrets about the campaign? “No. Look, I mean, if I were on the ballot, we would have won.”
Should he have given that weird closing argument on Monday? (The one when he kept talking about the algae in the Reflecting Pool.)
“It was a very good speech. Got great reviews.”
The great builder kept redirecting the journalists to the matter at hand. “Watch the beam go up!” he instructed. “You want to see the helipad? Bring the cameras over here. Let me show you.”
On Tuesday, voters sent a clear and unmistakable message to Trump: Focus on our concerns, not yours. More than six in 10 said he prioritizes his own interests above those of the country — a damning indictment.
On Wednesday, Trump delivered his response to the voters: Buzz off.
It’s as if he had embraced as his own the message that Melania Trump famously wore on her jacket back in 2018: “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”
For a normal president, a drubbing like the one Trump’s party experienced Tuesday would be occasion to say that he had heard the voters, to take responsibility and to pledge to do better.
After President George W. Bush’s party took a “thumping” in 2006, he gave a news conference and graciously said: “I’m obviously disappointed with the outcome of the election, and as the head of the Republican Party, I share a large part of the responsibility. I told my party’s leaders that it is now our duty to put the elections behind us and work together with the Democrats and independents on the great issues facing this country.”
After Obama’s party took a “shellacking” in 2010, he gave a news conference and said, with equal grace, that “every election, regardless of who wins and who loses, is a reminder that in our democracy, power rests not with those of us in elected office but with the people we have the privilege to serve. … And in the rush of activity, sometimes we lose track of the ways that we connected with folks that got us here in the first place.”
Then there was Donald Trump, 2026.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted.
“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” he added.
Trump also gave his view that “FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.”
And he posted a photo of a baseball cap with the word “VETO,” to signal how he would work with Democrats.
What, you thought he might change after the voters rejected him so resoundingly? Oh, my sweet summer child.
His M.O., learned at the feet of Roy Cohn, has always been the same. No apologies. No regrets. No admission of error or fallibility.
Such introspection would have to be the work of others. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke Wednesday about the scale of the GOP debacle, pointing out that Florida will be the only one of the largest 10 states to have a Republican governor. “Let’s just be clear about what happened last night: This is [as] close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years.”
Sen. John Cornyn, defeated in the Texas GOP primary by the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton (who went on to lose to Democrat James Talarico), wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that Trump “signaled disconnection by focusing on sideshows like swimming-pool liners in the Reflecting Pool” and his “plan for a Triumphal Arch.” Cornyn also warned that voters “won’t trust Republicans to cut fraud and scams out of government programs until we cut them out of our own ranks.”
Even Vice President JD Vance, in a long X post, essentially blamed his boss for the loss — and tried to distance himself from Trump. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote. “The president himself said so last night. If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. ... But everyone knows why we lost.”
(Yes, this is the same JD Vance who said in September, “I wouldn’t call it a war.”)
Trump, at his ballroom tour, professed not to be bothered by his understudy’s criticism, though asked if he had spoken to Vance yet about his presidential hopes, Trump repaid Vance for his disloyalty: “Maybe he won’t run. I don’t know who’s going to run.”
Trump seemed unnaturally calm given the very personal spanking he had just received at the hands of his countrymen. On the Iran war, he said, “We’ve done a great job” and he’d “do it again” if he had the chance to reconsider. Of Pete Hegseth, the inept defense secretary likely to face impeachment, Trump said, “He’s doing a very good job.” Of the Democrats, Trump said, “They’ve already called. They want to talk.”
But maybe the studied coolness was his only option. He had no way to howl about fraud in the election; the Democratic wins were too big to rig, as he once liked to say. But he is also temperamentally unable to admit fault. So all that was left was to pretend it didn’t happen — and move on to more pleasant topics.
Standing in the skeleton of his ballroom, he spoke, over screeching feedback, about his planned arch, about his golf course, about the 83 monuments, statues and fountains he has painted in gold or otherwise refurbished. And, of course, about his beloved helipad.
He acknowledged that the question had arisen during the campaign about why he spends so much time on White House renovations. His answer? “I like it.”
And for this president, what he likes is going to come before what the voters need — every single time.
Dana Milbank is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
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