Mara Liasson

So, yes, it is unprecedented.

It is unusual.

And I talked to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who's a professor of history at NYU.

She's also notably author of a book called Strongman, Mussolini to the Present.

And she says that we are living through the building of a personality cult.

to President Trump and that what he is doing mirrors what autocrats around the world have done for a century.

Yeah.

Traditionally, the White House was supposed to be humble.

It was supposed to represent a country of laws, not men.

It was supposed to symbolize that America was different, that it wasn't Versailles.

However, the ballroom is something he wants to be opulent.

And that is one of the objections that architects and others have is that like this isn't really what the White House was intended to be.

His White House, when I asked them about this, said that the president is really just focused on saving our country and not garnering recognition.

This

No wonder people would want to name things after him.

And we can talk about whether it's other people who had the idea or whether it's President Trump who has had the idea.

Yes.

I think that maybe coins aren't as big a deal as they were 100 years ago when they were melting down coins with Calvin Coolidge's face on it.

But I do think that, as Mara says, there's a large body of polling that shows that

A majority of Americans feel like President Trump is not focused on the things that matter the most to them.