Dan Diamond

And through it all, he's very focused on building his White House ballroom.

Yes.

He keeps coming back to that.

He was.

He was talking about it in the press briefing room.

And I was covering President Trump's press conference with the Artemis astronauts who had just returned from space.

And the president was asked what his schedule had been.

And he said, well, I was with the contractors today working on the ballroom.

I mean, this is something that we joke about it sometimes, but one of those jokes that might be true, that this might be the issue that is closest to his heart, trying to build this White House addition before he leaves office.

And that was before he highlighted it every day, it feels like, this week.

So my colleague at The Post and I, Ens Morse, we went back and we just tracked his remarks, his true social posts, and we expected a lot of mentions of the White House ballroom.

I don't think we expected it to surpass other policy priorities that the president has

has allegedly highlighted as big goals for this year.

We have a midterm election coming up here in the States.

Control of Congress is in the balance.

Republicans are trying to campaign on issues like drug prices and affordability.

And when you look at some of the things that Trump mentions less than the ballroom, there are things like this new TrumpRx website, his new drug pricing website that his advisors really, really want him to focus on.

But that pales, especially in recent days, to how many times he invokes the ballroom.

You're describing what I feel like have been half of my stories this year.

The push by President Trump to build things and brand things.