WASHINGTON—President Trump wants a little gratitude.
At a recent closed-door meeting in the Oval Office, the president expressed deep frustration to advisers that prominent figures in Washington hadn’t publicly thanked him for trying to overhaul the Kennedy Center, according to a senior administration official.
Instead, Trump’s bid to affix his name onto the center’s facade and make sweeping changes to the cultural institution has been met with opposition from Democrats, patrons of the arts and the courts. On Tuesday, following his latest legal setback, the president threatened to block renovations at the performing-arts venue unless his name is put on the building.
Twenty months into his second term, Trump isn’t getting his way—and he isn’t happy about it, according to advisers, administration officials and others close to the president.
The president has objected in public and private to media coverage of his presidency for months. But his frustrations reached a fever pitch on Friday, when one of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS NOW criticizing his administration, according to people familiar with the matter. Hours later, Trump banned the network and two other news organizations from the White House.
Behind the scenes, the president has told aides he doesn’t have enough political allies defending him on television and making the case for his second-term achievements, according to people familiar with the matter. White House spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump’s allies have “done an incredible job of getting the message out to voters.”
The president has been briefed on the headwinds facing Republicans in the midterms, and advisers have told him that the Iran war is a drag on his conservative base’s enthusiasm ahead of the election, though his team maintains they are cautiously optimistic about November.
The president’s frustrations mounted in the past week as two key advisers were away: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was in Florida, where on Wednesday she announced that she is cancer-free, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently left the White House.
Trump’s decision to ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House caught many White House officials by surprise, according to people familiar with the matter. But the president’s aides moved quickly to implement their boss’s directive, barring the outlets’ reporters from entering the White House on Saturday. A White House official said senior staff were with the president when he made the decision to ban the outlets.
One senior administration official reacted with exasperation to the decision, arguing that the move would do little to achieve the president’s goal of improving press coverage. The president has discussed banning news outlets from the White House before, according to people close to the White House. But aides have convinced him to take less aggressive measures, such as blocking reporters from the Oval Office or limiting their participation in the pool of reporters that covers the president when he conducts events in spaces that are too small for the entire press corps.
Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary under President George W. Bush and has frequently defended Trump, wrote on social media of the decision to kick out news outlets: “Banning them from the WH is not the solution.” He argued that the move could make it easier for a Democratic president to take similar action against conservative-leaning news outlets.
Trump’s decision capped a week of setbacks for the president. The president’s son and his new wife, Bettina Trump, confirmed a report that a Russian businessman paid for a lavish two-day wedding afterparty in the Bahamas. The president later told reporters on Friday that Donald Trump Jr. had reimbursed the Russian businessman.
On Monday, the Supreme Court blocked the administration from imposing new requirements for mail ballots, prompting Trump to criticize the conservative justices he installed on the court. Kevin Warsh, the president’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, joined his colleagues in voting to raise interest rates for the first time in three years, over the president’s objections
The president is grappling with falling approval ratings and the prospect of Republican losses in the coming midterm elections driven in part by the unpopular war in Iran, which has further frustrated voters by driving up energy prices. Diesel prices hit a record high last week, and on Saturday regular gasoline reached a national average of $4.48 a gallon, according to AAA.
A September poll from the New York Times and Siena Research found that 29% of surveyed Republicans believe the economy is in better shape than a year ago. That result is a contrast to a January poll from the Times that showed that 73% of voters from the president’s own party thought the economy was better positioned than a year earlier.
“Candidates all across the country are running on President Trump’s agenda, which includes historic tax cuts, increased wages, booming manufacturing, record investments, a Stock Market that has never done better, a secure border, safer communities, and so much more,” Cheung said in a statement.
Trump and his team are looking for wins. In August, the president asked his advisers to look for more foreign policy victories that he could tout ahead of the midterms, according to U.S. officials. On Friday, Trump announced that the U.S. and Denmark had reached an agreement that allows for more American forces in Greenland.
Trump will again turn to foreign policy this coming week as he speaks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House. Though Trump sees foreign policy as a legacy-defining issue for him, polls show that voters are more focused on domestic affairs.
Trump spent part of the weekend at Camp David, where he dismissed concerns about data centers as a “hoax” and announced a new “AI Force” akin to the Space Force, as well as plans for an AI czar. One item on the agenda at Camp David: discussing next steps in the Iran war, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump flew back to Washington on Saturday night alongside professional golfers Gary Player and Bryson DeChambeau.
On Sunday morning, the president told Fox News he was close to making a major decision on Iran. “My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave,” Trump said.
Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com, Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
