Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump HUMILIATED as Artists REFUSE to Join 250th Celebration

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Trump's vision for America's 250th birthday is already hitting turbulence, with artists reportedly distancing themselves from the event and new scrutiny surrounding his White House ballroom plans. Alex Wagner is joined by Brian Beutler to break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Okay, from a White House ball. room to a UFC arena on the South Lawn, the Octagon. Trump's second term is shaping up to be a gilded HG TV special that nobody asked for. My guest, Brian Boitler, author of the Off Message Substack, is here to help me discuss the golden era of Washington, D.C. And that is not a compliment.

Brian, it's great to see you. It actually sucks, man. Like, this is, I live here. I know. I'm from Washington, D.C. I grew up there. Oh, I didn't know that. That's my hometown. What neighborhood?

What neighborhood? Tenley Town, baby, Upper Northwest. Graduate of what is now known as Jackson Reed High School, proudly. Yeah. And what's happening? Yeah, I've been to the Kennedy Center over 20 years, maybe 10 times. It's not like these are the places I hang out. But it's nice to know they're there, and, like, they're an attraction for people that want to visit the city and stuff like that.

And he's just like wrecking all of it. Like, I don't know. It's hard. I mean, you're living with the realities of megalomania in a piercing and immediate way. Yeah. This is all abstract to the rest of us. But yeah, it's hard. Like, I mean, obviously most people who live in big cities in the United States aren't

fall into Trump. But even people who live in LA, San Francisco, New York, you're like, just imagine like some mayor came up and was like, the MoMA is now the Zauron Mamdan. Museum of Art. People would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? The M. Mn Moma stands for a Mammatani. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And it's like happening all over the city. I mean, it's good to see that like the efforts to commandeer these things is failing and that, you know, the effort to steal the 250th anniversary of America celebration from the public also seems to be falling apart. And I have like like some gallows humor about the whole thing. But just as like as an actual

resident of Washington. It's, it sucks. Yeah, I can, I mean, and we're going to get, well, I do want to ask if any of these improvements are striking your fancy. But first, let's just for people who have missed that just really electrifying tours that the president has been giving his family members, this is a clip of President Trump offering a glimpse of his ballroom project to his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump. Let's take a listen. This is a glass, beautiful glass tunnel, beautiful tunnel that goes right into the bone bones right there. good, right? We're ahead of schedule. We're right on budget. That's par for And it's a gift from me and from great patriots that, you know, it's going to cost the country,

nothing. But you still had Democrats and people try to stop you with legal challenges and it's like, well, they want to stop only because it's me. If anybody else were doing it, they say, you know, but they want to stop. But no, the ballroom is a gift to America from me and from Apple and from lots of great people and companies and $400 million. We were, it was going to be two and we doubled it up because they needed more, more space. The military is involved. The secret service is involved. It's a very secure, most secure facility ever built. Yeah. I mean, I, so obviously Tim Cook knew he was giving this money to the president, but I can't imagine he actually is happy that Apple is being mentioned in the same sentence as this is my gift to the country from Donald Trump's

mouth. What do you think, Brian? I mean, I'm not convinced to total coincidence that Tim Cook is saying peace my work here is done and yeah i like if any he i guess uh by retiring when he did or leaving uh the uh his his position at apple when he did he'll spare him from getting yelled at but i'm not sure to spare apple from customer blowback um apple does a really good job of locking you in uh but you know at the margin there are going to be people who aren't locked in because they don't have iPhones or they only use an app, whatever it is. And they'll switch to other products and that'll be on hit. Well, it just even, and even, I guess there's even if they don't, they're forever linked to what is a

fucking boondoggle, right? Like even Republicans in Congress who represent the lowest bar of morality and ethics are not down to add a billion dollars in funding for security in and around what is a hole in the ground where the East Wing used to be. Do you feel like, I mean, first of all, you're in Washington, you follow politics. What do you think of the Republican foot dragging on giving Trump the money for his ballroom? Now, they couldn't fund it through reconciliation because the Senate parliamentarian was like not so fast, bitches. But they also don't want to fund it.

I mean, they really just don't want to have anything to do with this exercise and egotism. What do you think happens? I guess that the supposedly the billion dollars he's trying to get us to pay for, is for like security and a bunker underneath the ballroom. And so maybe it's going to be, it has to be an under protected ballroom or a ballroom without a bunker underneath it. Or a drone, I think it's what is a drone port

that he also recently showed us. So drone landing pads all over the top of the ballroom. I mean, part of the issue here, not just with the ballroom, but the ballroom is like a good microcosm of why it's a problem when the president subverts the constitution. appropriation process, right? Like, if if he really wanted there to be a ballroom and he went to

Congress and he made the case, then Congress would, A, be able to say you don't get to use it as a conduit for bribery. B, we get to make sure that you use like a regular like process for finding contractors and making sure this thing doesn't run under budget. And see, we like we will have eyes on it as you as you do it. And one political aspect of this that I think is underrated is like there's all this talk now about Graham Platner and all will his scandals doom him in Maine. But like the appropriations chairman in the Senate is his opponent, Susan Collins. And this stuff is happening because she allowed it to happen. And so now the question is like, is there going to be a giant hole next to where the East Wing used to be

next to the residence of the White House for years and years and years and years because Trump can't get the votes to fund the ballroom. He doesn't have enough money to build the ballroom, right? Like that's on her, almost as much as it is on him. And I just, you know,

I think that when he announced it, Republicans hoped that it would just be a thing happening off to the side, that yes, for a few days, there'd be, you know, everyone would be appalled that he had torn down the east wing without permission, but then a ballroom would just kind of be built and they could deal with it later. But like, I think if they had thought about it for more than a second, nothing like that can happen at the White House because everything has to be fortified. And everything is like subject to oversight and needs to be funded. the public money. There is very likely to be a new Congress next year. There's going to be

visibility into this. Like it was never just going to go away. And then Trump became so unpopular that they had to decide whether they could vote for it. Like when it became when it became clear that they needed the money to build it from the public, that meant votes were going to have to happen. When they decided they wanted to do a second reconciliation bill, that meant Democrats were going to be able to force many kinds of votes on it. That meant that they were going to have to go on the record on this on multiple dimensions. And, uh, and now they're, now they're freaked out because it's on them as much as it is on him. I mean, what a service he does to his party as its leader. Uh, you know, you raise the point that this was never going to not use public funding, but it feels like as

the project has, as time has gone on, there's just more shit that's being added to it. It's like it was a ballroom. Now it's a ballroom with like a bunker. beneath it and a drone landing pad and like some kind of military installation on the roof. Like instead of scaling back his ambitions, Trump's just making life more difficult for both himself and the party as time goes on and is predicting impossibly that this whole thing's going to be done, I think, six months before his term is up. This is a 9,000 square foot facility you saw in that clip just how far along they are, which is to say not far along. There is a very real likelihood that a Democratic president could inherit this.

Like holding the ground. I kind of think he wants it done, you know, six months-ish before the end of his term so that he can go hunker down there. And live there forever. Well, just like if insurrection 2.0 requires him to go into a secured facility, he will have built one. He's never going to leave. He's never going to leave. I think that, look, like, I raised that like 80% in jest and 20% in seriousness because, like, I mean, he has real dictatorial ambition. And it's clear now.

And it's like there's no sense living in denial about it. it. But I think the main reason he went about it this way is that the first six months of this second term led him to believe that once he changes facts on the ground, the legal term here is stake driving, that if instead of asking permission, you beg forgiveness or in his case, not even that, right, you just go and do the thing irrespective what the law says, that by the time the courts get around to sorting it out, it's kind of too late, right? Like, he fired every from the Department of Education. He annihilated USAID and those are all illegal, obviously legal. Like the Supreme Court might come up with some fake justification for saying it wasn't illegal,

but it was clearly illegal, right? And I think they're probably going to say, actually, you shouldn't have done that. Like, that was illegal. But like, two and a half years later, like everyone who worked at the Department of Education is just going to be waiting around to take their jobs back. Like, they're going to have moved on. And so he will have gotten what he wanted, even though he did it in an illegal way. And then, like, Congress will feel obligated, or at least the responsible members of Congress, will feel obligated to try to reconstitute it in some sense.

And that'll give him power to go hire Trump loyalists to run the Department of Education, right? And so he wins, like, at both steps. But, yeah, I think these these vanity projects are different, right? Because it's not about the next term. Yes. And not. not only is it, there's no policy content to this stuff, but also the, you know, when the

Department of Education being torn down gets tied up in court, what that means is we don't have a Department of Education for however long, two and a half years, whatever. For Republicans, that's fine. They're okay with that. But when Trump tears down the east wing of the White House and turns, tries to turn the reflecting pool into some sort of Versailles like swimming pool or something like that and puts his name on the Kennedy Center but then gets told he can't and you know he makes a mess he makes a huge mess and then when he gets told wait slow down what that means is that there's just a mess and the mess

persists for as long as the process takes to play out and so it's like it's kind of like the equivalent of walking around a banquet with like like a like food stain on your shirt or something like that but yeah barf on your shoes um And so it's just like the, whatever, the optics problem that people in politics like to talk about just persist. It's like an ongoing embarrassment, a humiliation. Right. And the hollowing out of the Department of Education is actually pretty much the point. Destroying the East Wing is not the end game here. They really do want to construct.

There needs to be something put back up in place. It's like almost as if they should have had a plan for how this was actually going to be executed. But never mind. I mean, I am interested to know we started this conversation with you telling me how depressing it is to be in D.C., and I completely get that. And yet, I was listening to The New York Times breakdown. David Ferenhold has been doing amazing investigative reporting on how all of these projects are being funded. The no-bid contracts are going out to Trump lackeys or associates of Trump lackeys. And one of the things they're doing is spending a bunch of public money on

making sure the fountains in D.C. work again. And gilding a pair of bronze horses near the Lincoln Memorial. Notice reported that the rush job on the horses was handed out to a Maryland contractor and offered $5 million to paint the horses in 23.75-carat gold. That's almost 24-carat goal. I'm interested in this part. According to agency documentation, the gilding company, there are still gilding companies, was covering the statues. in an unusually thick layer of nearly pure gold, heavier and purer, purer than even the extra thick gold the same studio used to refinish the exterior of the Wyoming State Capitol Dome seven years ago.

The contract includes more than gold leafing, although the gold itself is certain to be a significant part of that cost because, of course, the price of gold is essentially doubled over the last several years, thanks to Trump's shocking mismanagement of both our economy and his mismanagement of the global economy. insofar as America manages the global economy. But first of all, if you're feeling low, Brian, couldn't you just go up there with a hammer and just take some gold? Yep, that's where I was thinking.

You know, somebody's going to loot that. Unusually thick layer of pure gold in these times when people can't fucking afford gas. Like, why not just have a big banner over the White House that says, let them eat cake? I mean, that would be. I have a real prediction that I just came up with. Okay. I'm like 50% confident, but I would put some money on it, is that in short order,

he's going to need to order the National Guard troops he has roaming D.C. stationed at these fountains to protect them from people who want to chip away a little bit of gold and put it in their pocket. I mean, it wouldn't be inadvisable to have someone protecting pure gold statues, thick, thickly covered pure gold statues. I'm just saying. I'm not one of those people that. robbs, you know, the graves of the pharaohs, but gold is a real incentive for people, especially

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And they and like it's nice. There's a, there's a park not too far from where I live called Meridian Hill Park. It has like a really nice cascading fountain that had been off for basically the whole time I've lived here. And it's on again, right? And that's better than before. And I suppose that having a statue covered in gold that will then need to be protected by federal troops because people might steal the gold is better than, you know, something covered in rust. But like, you know, the, the answer to that is for Trump to act like a normal president and say that the park service should just do its job. If it needs a little bit more funding, get that thrown into an appropriations bill.

And, and, and then restore the parks to what they were meant to look like, not to what he wishes they look like so that they would be at home in Mar-a-Lago or whatever. So, like, for me, the, it's stupid. But the fountains, the statues, like, that's a small insult. The big insult is like, there's just, like, our performing arts industry is, like, decimated. The Arlington National Cemetery, if he gets away with building, beginning construction on the triumphal arch that he wants to build, is going to put a giant gaudy eyesore, like looming over, the gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery, where, like, my father-in-law is internearned. And, you know, it's, like, it's gross.

The galvanizing thing is that there is, like, pockets of old school street protest-style resistance to these things. Fortunately, like, a judge has now stopped the take over the Kennedy Center and ordered his name to be pulled off the building. And so... He's very upset about that, Brian. He's very upset because that's the whole point of all. all of this. This is not about America's 250th. This is about celebrating Donald Trump, the man, the myth. So I don't know that the judge can order the Kennedy Center to be reopened and for programming to resume, but I think maybe he'll get the name pulled off. And he'll definitely,

it seems like Trump is going to have a hard time bulldozing the Kennedy Center, which I think was like he's real plan. But there was talk about like people kind of encamping on the grounds of the Kennedy Center surrounding it to prevent the federal. And like I would like to see more stuff like that. And there's like a fairly large group of protesters that has been kind of like marching near the area where the arch is supposed to be built. And I think that if there's no like temporary restraining order or something issue to prevent that construction from beginning, that people will just kind of put their bodies in the way of it. because, like, at some point, it's just, like, too much of an indignity to bear, and it's not his city, and the people who live here really care about it.

Well, and I think there's probably no better way to celebrate America's 250th birthday than to reject tyranny and to protest empire, which is exactly what Donald Trump stands for at this point. Now I feel ashamed because I intentionally scheduled my, like, one annual vacation for the 250th because, like, I don't want to be here with this guy ruining it. Globalist. But now you're making me realize I should have decided to stick around. It's a time for people who care about this democracy to try and reclaim it and to not let it be a gaudy, gilded celebration of one man's ego on his very small hands. It is about us, not him.

And I feel like I let you down. That's, that's, that's, you know, that's the cautionary note I would sound is because this is also nauseating, don't give up on the thing it's supposed to celebrate, which is our rich and complicated history as a country. And moving the ball forward, right? Not just covering horse statues in gold. Although, I got to say, if they don't have National Guard troops around

those horse statues, might go with my little ice pick and take a little sample. I do think I feel a little ashamed of myself for piecing out on this one. But I would like to check in with the no kings people, right? Because

There is a No Kings rally process. Is there? Okay, that's good. I was thinking like, you know, Fourth of July happens everywhere and Trump can't control all of the nation's Fourth of July celebrations. And to the extent that we can get some of the larger ones in cities to be inflected with the spirit of no kings aimed at Trump, I feel like that would send a powerful counter message to what is it called? He's calling it Freedom 250, which is now a total fiasco and a failure. And so it will look like a true celebration of America's actual anti-royal traditions. And his will look like, you know, a king in collapse. Let's say more.

I've said that phrase more than I have since I was in French class. Brian Boitler, I am sorry you have to live through this. I think as someone who's doing the duty of being a journalist and a thinker in these. times you are allowed to leave the country when Freedom 250 is going down, although they may call a need you for the musical act. Because nobody else is showing. I will. Look, if they call me up and ask me to sing some kind of aria on whatever stage they have

set up on the mall and offer to pay me enough, I'll cancel my vacation. I will, I'll go to bat for Trump's America. It's just vanilla ice and Brian Butler. We live in these things. times. I mean, that would be a great story for the rest of my life. Yeah, they would be that. It sure would be that. Brian, thank you for taking time out of your days suffering through the indignities of the Trump Freedom 250 celebrations around Washington and see. I appreciate you. Brian Boiler from Off message. It's great to see you. Thank you.

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