CNN host Kasie Hunt barely contained her smiles while playing high-speed footage of President Donald Trump droning on for more than 30 minutes to reporters about new pavement.
“Like I’m fixing the country,” Trump said before Hunt eventually had to kick the video into high speed to hasten the process. “We’re fixing the White House, too. It’s ridiculous the way this place was taken care of [by] nobody, including other presidents. They didn’t see it. But I see it because I was very good at real estate, like maybe the best in a lot of ways. And, uh, I love construction.”
“’I love construction,’ he says,” said Hunt, on her Wednesday “The Arena with Kasie Hunt” show as Trump rattled off his plans. “Instead, he spent 32 minutes — yes, 32. We counted. And you are currently watching part of it at double speed with some jumps, so you can get a sense of just how long this went on for with the president explaining in painstaking detail the changes that he’s bringing to the people’s house.”
Hunt pointed out that the impromptu tour appeared to have hijacked a “policy meeting” the president had previously announced.
“He is the builder in chief. But if you wonder why his approval ratings have been slipping even among Republicans, it’s that they’re constantly reminded that he ran to tackle inflation. Inflation hasn’t been tackled. And he’s talking about the ballroom and beautiful marble,” said Axios reporter Marc Caputo in a panel discussion. “We wrote a story the other day in Axios about the president’s approval rating falling among Republicans. … But the real movement is when you look at the internals, those who had a very strong approval of him, they’ve ticked down 20 points. So, the thrill is gone for Republicans.”
Hunt pointed out that a CNN poll revealed 58 percent of respondents were dissatisfied or angry about Trump’s endless DC projects.
Former South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford called Trump’s behavior a “Marie Antoinette let-them-eat-cake kind of moment.”
“I mean, this is scary when people are panicking over the price of gas inflation,” said Sanford. “Things are really impacting working people’s lives. And you’re worried about the marble on the helicopter landing pad.”
Former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield warned that a president only “gets so much voter attention every day” and that squandering that time on projects “divorced from people’s lives” does no favors to Republicans running in this cycle.
“I would just be absolutely ripping my hair out because he’s not helping them by doing this,” Bedingfield said.
– YouTube youtu.be