President Trump was on the roof.
As a confused group of reporters assembled below him on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump strolled around on top of the White House, stopping somewhere above the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room — now only occasionally a venue for taking questions — to tell his audience that he was “taking a little walk” in service of his latest home improvement project: a large ballroom.
“It’s just another way to spend my money for the country,” Mr. Trump shouted. He was getting a bird’s-eye view of where the $200 million White House ballroom he has proposed building would go, according to the White House.
The president ignored follow-up questions — one reporter shouted “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” after the president appeared to be making a circular gesture with his arms and hands and saying “something beautiful.” Mr. Trump did not answer before continuing a 20-minute walkabout that included standing on the roof near the Oval Office to survey the newly paved Rose Garden.
What looked like a casual stroll was actually a heavily secured appearance: The area around the building was locked down and Secret Service agents, including members of the agency’s counter-sniper team, accompanied Mr. Trump on his walk.
The construction of a ballroom is not the most pressing issue facing Mr. Trump or his fellow Republicans, but it’s a pretty good distraction. (Several conservative lawmakers are spending their August recesses either avoiding constituents in their districts or getting screamed at over the economically damaging details of domestic policy legislation that Mr. Trump pressured Republicans to ram through Congress.)
It appears that Mr. Trump’s respite from the tumult — some of which he has wrought — is to ensconce himself in a White House that is rapidly changing from the taxpayer-funded people’s house to one that resembles one of the Louis XIV-inspired properties in his portfolio.
On social media, Mr. Trump has referred to these as “‘fun’ projects I do while thinking about the World Economy, the United States, China, Russia, and lots of other Countries, places, and events.”
In that vein, Mr. Trump, a creature of habit, has occupied himself by festooning the Oval Office with golden embellishments, urns, baskets and coasters embossed with his last name. He has planted large American flags on the lawn.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, he spent quite a bit of time at the Trump International Hotel, holding court for family members, prominent conservatives and journalists. But now, with the hotel closed, he appears to be using the White House for a similar purpose.
Mr. Trump remains a homebody with a deep distrust of situations he does not control. Lately, he has turned his attention away from holding rallies or public events to gin up political support and toward the altering of a White House complex he has in turns complimented as grand and maligned as outdated. Visitors are still allowed on tours, and there is no mistaking who lives upstairs.
He has overseen the paving over of the Rose Garden, a historic presidential venue that Melania Trump, the first lady, had once revamped with the help of historians, architects and designers. At her direction, they replanted roses, removed several problematic crab apple trees that had bedeviled designers since the Reagan administration and installed a limestone walkway.
In 2020, Mrs. Trump also oversaw the installation of the first piece of art from an Asian American artist to be included in the White House collection. That statue is no longer in the Rose Garden. A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to not disclose internal plans, said that the piece was being polished. But the official did not know when or if it would be returned to the newly paved garden.
On Tuesday, the East Wing did not respond to a request for comment about whether the first lady supported the changes to a project that took a year and a half to design and revamp, and just days to partially pave over. Other questions, including one about what would become of a suite of East Wing offices that appear to be in the way of the proposed ballroom, were forwarded to the West Wing.
The residence, too, has long been Mr. Trump’s domain. When he first moved into the White House in 2017, he overruled the décor choices of Mrs. Trump in favor of several gilded pieces in a permanent White House collection.
And most recently, there is the ballroom, the rendering of which has a distinct resemblance to the event space at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, his gilded fortress in Palm Beach. The Mar-a-Lago ballroom has long been a space for fund-raisers, dinners and weddings, and its patio is where Mr. Trump enjoys a round of applause before taking his seat at dinner. The people who assemble there have paid for the privilege of an event where Mr. Trump appears as either the de facto maître d’ or the centerpiece the party revolves around.
In the Trump White House, people who have given money to the president’s cryptocurrency business have been invited for dinner. Questions about who is funding the ballroom, however, are mostly unanswered. White House officials said the president and “other patriot donors” would pay for the renovations, but declined to give details.
Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said the donor funding plan was “highly unusual.”
“There is certainly a risk that donors to this project, which Donald Trump has made clear is important to him, could see it as a way to curry favor with the administration,” he said.
During his walkabout on Tuesday, Mr. Trump seemed to say he would be paying for the 90,000-square-foot project, which is almost twice the size of the White House residence.
“Anything I do is financed by me; in other words, contributed,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Just like my salary is contributed. But nobody ever mentions that.”
And now, a quick fact check: Mr. Trump’s first-term White House announced that he partially donated his salary to agencies, including the Department of Education. But his donations declined over the course of his first term, and he reported no charitable giving in 2020, according to his tax returns. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about how he planned to donate his salary this year.
Maggie Haberman and Doug Mills contributed reporting.