00:00Trump has also fixed partisan plaques to the portraits of all U.S. commanders-in-chief,
00:06presidents himself included, on what's known as his presidential walk of fame at the White House.
00:11Predictably, Trump has condemned Joe Biden as sleepy, Barack Obama as divisive,
00:16and the one that surprised many presidential observers.
00:19He called Ronald Reagan a fan of a young Trump.
00:23Catherine Viet with this.
00:24Sleepy, divisive, and a fan of a young Donald Trump.
00:31These are just some of the descriptions to be found in a series of new plaques affixed below the portraits of all U.S. presidents,
00:39including Donald Trump himself.
00:41While the plaques may look like many official markers,
00:44they are written in the style of one of Trump's true social posts
00:48and contain his haphazard capitalizations and numerous exclamation points.
00:53They are the latest addition to Trump's presidential walk of fame,
00:57which he unveiled in September,
01:00and contain many insults and unfounded claims about most of his predecessors.
01:05Joe Biden, who was referred to as Sleepy Joe and by far the worst president in American history,
01:12is still the only leader not to have his portrait in a frame.
01:16Instead, a photo of an auto pen with his signature was used.
01:20Barack Obama was deemed one of the most divisive political figures in American history,
01:25while Ronald Reagan was described as a fan of President Donald J. Trump
01:30before President Trump's historic run for the White House.
01:34The White House confirmed the plaques convey Trump's opinion.
01:39The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each president and the legacy they left behind.
01:44As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself.
01:48This installation is just Trump's latest effort to remake the White House in his own image
01:55and reshape U.S. history to his own viewpoint.
01:59The photo gallery sits next to the Rose Garden, which Trump paved over,
02:04and is also near the East Wing that he has torn down to build a gilded 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
02:11Indeed, reshaping, changing, altering, distorting, some might say, the full picture.
02:18The famed Kennedy Arts Center is to be renamed Trump Kennedy Center.
02:23This, coming from the White House this Thursday,
02:25the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to John F. Kennedy,
02:28the U.S. president who was assassinated in the early 60s.
02:31It's a renowned center for cultural excellence and performing arts.
02:34They voted for the change in recognition of Trump's unbelievable overhauling of the famed venue.
02:40So says the White House press secretary, who we just saw in that report, Caroline Leavitt.
02:45Quite why Trump wants to have his name attached and put ahead of that of Kennedy wasn't actually explained.
02:51Well, let's get some light on this matter and bring in Ian Reifovitz.
02:54Ian is a distinguished professor of history at the Sunni Empire State University.
02:59Ian's also authored at least four books on his subject.
03:02Ian, let's start with that Trump-Kennedy Center.
03:05Why is he doing this?
03:08Well, after the speech last night, people are shaking their heads about a lot of things.
03:14Never Trump conservative Tom Nichols wrote a column which is called,
03:19This is what presidential panic looks like.
03:23Right?
03:23I mean, we're talking about, in terms of the Kennedy Center,
03:26We're talking about actually something that has its name through a law.
03:32Through a law, an act of Congress signed by a president.
03:34So it's not something he can change unilaterally.
03:36Much like Department of Defense, which he cannot change unilaterally to Department of War.
03:40He can say what he wants, but the legal name remains the Department of Defense,
03:44just as the legal name will remain the Kennedy Center, John F. Kennedy Center,
03:48as long as there's not a law passed by Congress.
03:51But this is who Donald Trump is.
03:54Donald Trump's political style is one in which he relies on demonstrating dominance.
04:02It's almost like a tribal chieftain who constantly has to remind everybody else in the tribe who is boss.
04:08This is how he operates.
04:09It plays to his base.
04:11I've written about this some in my most recent book.
04:13But he plays to his base, which is roughly somewhere around a quarter to a third of the country, perhaps shrinking.
04:19But these are the people who thrill to the way he talks.
04:23He acts like an entertainer.
04:24He seems to think that he needs to keep them entertained.
04:28So I think all of these things that we see him doing, you have to have that in your mind,
04:33that his mindset is that of an entertainer, almost like the World Wrestling Federation or a radio shock jock.
04:39He's putting on a show. And so he wants to constantly have the attention on him as the leader and the ringmaster.
04:45And he doesn't want anybody to challenge his leadership.
04:48So the same then for the Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace, an insert made earlier this month.
04:54Well, absolutely. And sometimes he can get people to go along with him, right?
05:00We heard recently that FIFA, the world's soccer governing body, inaugurated and gave to Mr. Trump its inaugural peace prize.
05:11I'm not really sure what a soccer organization has to do with war and peace.
05:15It doesn't generally involve itself in diplomatic affairs.
05:18But they did that. And lo and behold, a few days later, Donald Trump, his White House and his Department of Justice ended an investigation into some FIFA officials.
05:29So in some ways, it's a two way street, right?
05:31Trump wants to show he's boss.
05:33Other people want to flatter Trump by showing him he's the boss or the prince of peace or whatever it is that he wants to on a given day.
05:40And sometimes they get favors in return.
05:43You mentioned Trump's speech.
05:45We mentioned there's more questions than answers, perhaps.
05:48Can you give us a more kind of nuanced assessment of his first year of this second term?
05:56Well, you know, he has done a lot of things outside of what I think his advisors would have wanted him to do.
06:04They want him to be focused on the economy.
06:07Many have argued, and I think there's some data, certainly some data behind this,
06:10that he was elected because of dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration.
06:14Not only on the economy, but specifically on the issue of affordability.
06:18So Trump has come in with a self-described mandate to bring down prices.
06:23But he spends a lot of time talking about other things, whether it's, you know, the Kennedy Center or, you know,
06:30the Nobel Prize for Peace that he wants or speaking crudely about somebody who was recently murdered in the case of Rob Reiner.
06:38The speech last night was an attempt to refocus his attention and the country's attention on the economy.
06:45He didn't divert from his prepared remarks, which he almost always does.
06:49He often has other things that he'd like to talk about.
06:51He just goes and plows, you know, plows through them and away from the prepared remarks.
06:54But here he stuck to them.
06:55He read them very fast.
06:56And apparently he seemed to be angry almost in his tone.
07:00But he wants to talk about the economy for two reasons.
07:02He wants to convince people that the economy is better than they think it is.
07:06And he wants to convince them that whatever problems they're feeling in the economy are the fault of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
07:12So we talked about inflation, right?
07:14He said inflation had never been higher than when he took office.
07:17Well, of course, that's not true.
07:18Inflation had dropped in the previous two years before he took office.
07:21And even the peak under Joe Biden was not close to the high point of inflation in American history.
07:27And inflation hasn't dropped really since he took office.
07:30The data that was available as of last night when he made the speech, the most recent rate of inflation at that point was 3%.
07:35When Trump took office, it was 3%.
07:38So he throws a lot of statistics out there and makes a lot of statements.
07:41But they're not backed up by the facts.
07:45So that's really the issue.
07:46Ian Reifovitz, as always, thank you for your insight.
07:49We really appreciate it.
07:50Ian Reifovitz, a distinguished professor of history at the Sunni Empire State University,
07:54joining us from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
07:57Great to see you, sir.
07:57Thank you very much indeed.
07:59That analysis of Trump's speech, Trump's insertion of his name above certain buildings,
08:04and of course why it's all happening.
08:05And those plaques, of course, in the Presidential Hall of Fame,
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