When Donald Trump was asked how he was holding up after the shooting death of his friend Charlie Kirk, his first instinct wasn’t to reflect on the tragedy — it was to brag about construction.
On Friday, a reporter asked Trump a simple, personal question: “How have you been holding up these last three and a half days?” Kirk, a conservative activist and longtime Trump ally, had been shot and killed just days earlier during an appearance at the University of Utah.
Trump started with: “I think very good.”
Then, without a pause, he veered completely off course.
“And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks,” he said, gesturing toward the White House grounds. “They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s going to be a beauty. It’ll be absolutely magnificent structure.”
He“It’ll get done very nice and it’ll be one of the best anywhere in the world,” Trump added — and walked off. That was it. No further mention of Kirk, no condolences, no real emotion.
The clip went viral for all the wrong reasons. On Pod Save America, co-hosts Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer were stunned.
“I have no words,” Vietor said.
Pfeiffer followed up: “It’s truly just the lack of empathy, sympathy, just general human emotion in the man is like gobsmacking.”
Kirk was just 31. His death shocked the conservative movement and sparked outrage online. Trump has since said the “radical left” was to blame for the “rhetoric” behind what he called “terrorism,” though investigators have not confirmed a motive.
He also announced plans to award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously — and reportedly called Kirk’s widow. But none of that seemed to matter in the moment when the cameras were rolling and the question was about grief.
“To pivot a question like that to wanting credit about constructing a ballroom—did you not hear that in your own head, how wrong that sounds?” Vietor said. “He can’t find even a second to just have some empathy.”
A close friend is gunned down. A reporter asks how you’re doing. And the response is: Look at the trucks. We’re building a ballroom.
Watch the clip below:
