I'm going to pivot now to landscape design, if you will.

Um, so yesterday, ABC's Rachel Scott, who accompanied the president on this visit to the reflecting pool between the Lincoln and the and the Washington Monument, asked Trump, uh, you were here against the backdrop of the war in Iran, why focus on all these projects right now?

By projects, she meant the fixing the Kennedy Center, building an arch near the Arlington Cemetery and and re uh repainting the the base of the reflecting pool.

And then the president insulted Scott in very nasty terms, but the question remains, and all of us who cover him know this very well, he seems much more engaged in um architecture, interior design, exterior design, landscaping, heartscaping.

um than he is in managing the globe.

Yeah.

What What's going on?

Well, he's a developer at heart.

Um but I think it's more just his eye towards legacy that he does feel like he's looking beyond the midterms.

He's looking beyond the election.

He's looking for the history books.

And I think that is in part connected to Iran.

He's trying to redraw the world's maps.

Greenland was like that.

Venezuela, hey, maybe Cuba next.

But here in Washington, he's trying to leave his physical imprint.

That is what he cares about.

the arch, the ballroom, uh now perhaps uh costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.

Uh and yes, and that's why he's he's so sensitive to it because it's not just reporters questions.

There are Republicans who have raised the same issues.

You've taken your eye off the ball, uh sir, would they say with tears in their eyes, uh to say this is not what got you and all of us elected last time around.

You've you've misplace what Americans care about.

Right.

There's two things going on here.

Can I just point out one is the president has a tendency to attack female reporters in a particularly brutal way.

Black female reporters in particular.

Rachel Scott, as we all know, is a fabulous reporter and a wonderful person and doesn't deserve that.

No one does.

The other, to Jonathan, it was particularly nasty.

It was.

To Jonathan's point, there's two ways you can create legacy as a president, right?

One is through policy.

President ran on changing the American economy.

That is not going well.

seems like he's leaning into the part that he can control, which is this idea of monument to self, the builded oval office, a paved over rose garden, his name on buildings.

I want to I want to stay along this theme about the president and and the way he's evolving in this term.

There was this very odd encounter in the White House this week.

It was in an event about youth fitness.

Um, and the president had this to say to a group of young people.

Just watch this.

We would have had a ran an Iran with a nuclear weapon and maybe we wouldn't all be here right now.

I can tell you the Middle East would have been gone.

Israel would have been gone and they would have trained their sights on Europe first and then us because they're sick people.

These are sick people.

And we're not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.

The power of a nuclear weapon is something I don't even want to talk about.

It's not going to happen.

Vivian, the the sense of appropriateness is is is interesting here.

Um, I want to ask you about it, but I I want to read something that Peter wrote last month, and you could comment on it.

I love that.

I know you get the chance to like comment on Peter.

Peter wrote Peter wrote, "Democrats who have long challenged Mr.

Trump's psychological fitness have issued a fresh fresh chorus of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability.

But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left, late night comics, or mental health professionals making long-distant diagnosis.

It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats, and foreign officials.

And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political right among one-time allies of the president.

Um that was Peter writing uh last month.

You watch is always right.

You watch the that's not true.

Um but well, that'll be the subject of our next episode.

Um, but I want I I I I talk about that particular episode.

It's this the sense of appropriateness of place of of being totally discordant of talking about nuclear destruction with a group of eight-year-olds.

What What are we seeing these days?

Most of us have been in the room with the president where we see that he tends to kind of drift into his own thoughts oftentimes um often out loud regardless of who's in the room.

Um he goes on tangents.

He has questioned the existence of Santa Claus in front of children uh visiting the White House.

So, this is not particularly surprising, but you could see it is definitely um a good uh window into his thought process.

Not only was he talking about the Iran war and potentially, you know, nuclear uh war as a result of the Iran Iran war, he also um went into a riff about how he um made peace in eight different countries and yet he was deprived of the Nobel Peace Prize.

All the while these children were looking around the room completely distracted a by the grandeur of the Oval Office, the gold grandeur of the Oval Office and also um just the fact that they had no idea what he was talking about and it's just a frame of mind at this point.

Right.

Are you seeing a Yeah.

a difference in in in the quality of thinking or appropriateness?

He also asked one of the kids if he thought he could take him in a fight.

Uh I mean that that's where this was.

He whether it's changed or not, I'm not sure.

It's may have.

Certainly people do think he has, but at the very least he's even less burdened.

Not that he ever was burdened to like keep a thought to himself.

Yeah.

Uh you wherever he is, he feels like I'm in charge.

I can say what I want.

I don't care who's here.

And I also think he doesn't suffer any sort of consequence.

He doesn't even have an aid afterwards telling I'm sure you shouldn't have said that.

Like that just doesn't happen.

Yeah.

You could find episodes obviously in his first term, you could find plenty, you know, to to raise questions about stability.

But I think what is uh striking is it happening more and more, right?

I every week seems to bring another example of people look at that and they they scratch their head and say my goodness what is that because of decline or because there's no John Kelly or Jim Madison it could be both right but there's a clearly a lack of inhibition right you know in fact none of us as a medical professional but there is a term called disinhibition which increases with age and you see other things uh that have increased in the second term more use of profanity he speaks longer uh and obviously he is less uh uh inhibited from doing some of the things he talked about doing the first term but didn't actually follow through on now he's following through on them.

Maybe because he doesn't have a John Kelly or a Jim Mattis or an HR McMaster.

Maybe because he's looking at his legacy and thinking about uh what history will remember about him.

His 80th birthday is a month away, right?

Um I I want to pivot to I mean maybe this is a dissident question in a in a kind of way, but you know there's always drama around uh his cabinet, his top officials.

Uh, as you all know, The Atlantic has been reporting on Cash Patel, the head of the FBI for the past several weeks, raising concerns, uh, people around Patel, people in the FBI raising concerns about erratic behavior, about excessive drinking charges he's denied.

Obviously, he's also filed suit against us.

Um, and and this week, our reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick reported that Patel um has been commissioning and distributing cash uh cash Patel branded uh bourbon bottles.

Um and uh here's here's one of them actually.

Uh this is something that uh we acquired.

This is the first use of a prop on Washington in approximately 60 years by the way.

Give you his uh No, we are not discussing where this came from, but it is real.

It is absolutely real.

Um and John, let's talk about um how this sort of behavior and these kind of stories in another kind of administration would be dealt with.

Oh, I mean he would have been gone long ago.

I mean for the and not just well beyond we got to this particular moment and it is a magnificent prop there in front of you Jeeoff.

Thank you very much.

Um you know but even in Trump 1.0 he probably wouldn't have had patience for this.

We know was prone to a lot of turnover.

This time we have seen a few dismissals just in the last couple of months but his first year was very much the no scalps policy.

Don't let the media get a win.

Don't let Democrats say you should fire this person and then do so.

Um, and I think with Cash Patel, though we should be clear, there's not exactly been a viferous defense from the president for the FBI director, but he also still has his job despite questions about about his job performance, including raised within the ranks of the FBI.

Right.

Right.

Omna, um, give us your sense of this tension in the White House between no scalps, I'm not firing anyone, versus people who are highly controversial and diversionary.

Well, I think that's a calculation the president has to make person by person, right?

The the folks along the way where he has changed path on immigration, for example, at DHS pulling Gregory Bo from the field and replacing him with Tom Hman, the the effort to have Mr.

Bovina out in front was a very aggressive sort of messaging machismo sort of take no prisoners approach to immigration enforcement.

When that backfired and that he faced backlash from the public in particular, there was a replacement there.

And so I think in some ways if there is a line to be drawn or one we should be looking for, it's when there is that kind of backlash and more of a public sentiment shift that the president is responsive.

I want to shift to another topic, although I'm going to leave the bottle here because it goes so well with the table.

Uh the the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a congressional map that would have added four Democratic seats in Congress.

It's obviously a big win for the Republicans.

Uh John, 2026 is really turning into the Hunger Games of redistricting.

Yeah, started with the president asking Texas to do so.

Uh we saw Democrats respond with California and then it's been tit for tat.

It is an arms race, if you will.

Um and this was a de Democrats were really invested both financially but also psychologically in Virginia.

So that was seen as a real blow today uh for that.

And then you on top of that, we of course have a decision from the Supreme Court last week, which has now given a green light to seemingly most of the South to suddenly try to redistrict uh all all of their congressional as well from Alabama to to Florida and beyond.

Right.

Uh Vivian, in Indiana, Trump just had a big victory in the primaries.

He wanted to knock off some state senators, Republican state senators who did not go along with the redistricting map.

And and that seems to show us that he's got some juice.

Yeah, he's still got some juice within the party for for sure and especially in certain parts of the country where they do believe that Trump's support is the ultimate support.

And so for them, you know, siding with Trump's chosen candidates against who those who have supported his agenda was a priority regardless of whether or not in some cases you had these lawmakers that were there for for decades.

Um they they did not fare as well and it's because they spoke out against redistricting and other political priorities.

What Peter, last word to you.

What what does uh what does 2026 or 2028 look like if this trend continues in terms of polarization?

Yeah, I mean you can understand why Democrats decided to respond to Republicans, but basically the bottom line of this is we have made Jerry mandering even worse.

The polarization that has been afflicting our politics now for some years will only get worse because you're going to have seats that are all uh conservative or all liberal and you're not going to have people having any incentive to move the middle.

Well, fascinating conversation.

We are going to have to leave it there for now.

Thank you for joining me at the Woodford Reserve.