Kasie Hunt Plays Trump’s 32-Minute White House Driveway Segment at High Speed
Key Takeaways
- •Trump spoke for 32 minutes about White House renovation plans and new pavement during an unscheduled appearance on CNN.
- •Hunt sped up the footage on air to shorten the segment and said the remarks appeared to interrupt a previously announced policy meeting.
- •Marc Caputo said Trump’s focus on construction could be contributing to declining approval among Republicans, especially because voters expected action on inflation.
- •Hunt said a CNN poll found 58% of respondents were dissatisfied or angry about Trump’s ongoing Washington, D.C., projects.
- •Mark Sanford and Kate Bedingfield said Trump’s attention to marble and other projects could be politically damaging because it is disconnected from everyday concerns.
CNN host Kasie Hunt appeared to suppress a smile while airing high-speed footage of President Donald Trump speaking for more than 30 minutes to reporters about new pavement.
“Like I'm fixing the country,” Trump said before Hunt eventually sped up the video to move it along. “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,” Hunt said on her Wednesday The Arena with Kasie Hunt program as Trump outlined 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 said the unscheduled tour appeared to interrupt a “policy meeting” the president had previously announced, underscoring how White House renovations can become a public message as well as a facilities issue.
During a panel discussion, Axios reporter Marc Caputo said Trump’s focus on construction projects could help explain slipping approval ratings among Republicans.
“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,” Caputo said. “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 also noted that a CNN poll found 58 percent of respondents were dissatisfied or angry about Trump’s ongoing Washington, D.C., 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,” Sanford said. “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 said a president only “gets so much voter attention every day” and that using 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.
Source video: https://youtu.be/RV_cxyEH-4o
