Trump Embraces His Inner Michael Scott and Ventures Out on the White House Roof

As I watched the president of the United States emerge on the roof of the White House, I couldn’t help but hear Michael Scott’s voice from The Office playing over it, declaring that “The stress of my modern office has forced me to go into a depression!” Again, I am tapping the sign that says maybe there’s a reason why this is all so crazy.

Reporters shouted to ask what he was doing up there and he said he was “taking a little walk.” He said something about the White House ballroom and made some gestures but it’s not really making a ton of sense yet. Normal stuff

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— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) August 5, 2025 at 9:07 AM

There was a purpose for Trump’s visit to the White House roof, as he was up there with James McCrery, the architect a world historic cheapskate wants to build this ballroom he’s totally going to pay for like he paid all those other real estate contractors in his past. Trump wasn’t very clear in what he was saying when he shouted down to White House reporters who, according to The Independent, got word “at approximately 9:40 am” that “Trump might be making an appearance.” An hour later, he emerged on the roof.

He is clearly in his element here. He’s back to being real estate man. Making his favored big hand gestures referencing…something circular. He’s smiling. Like, actually smiling. Not breaking his dime store Winston Churchill act. The lone consolation of Trump’s authoritarianism is knowing that he is one of the most miserable humans on earth and would much rather be at a Broadway play or at an Epstein party than being president, and this performative Michael Scott-esque appearance is a reminder of who he really is.

Like Michael Scott, he’s a peacock. Trump wants, nay–needs–you to look at him every second of every day. He’s like a tulpa of the American id who will die without our attention manifesting him into the real world. Trump wants you to talk about his nice, gilded ballroom he’s going to build and then stick someone else with the bill, not how Jeffrey Epstein said he was Trump’s “closest friend.” Sometimes I wonder, like with Michael Scott and his management job he is also incapable of doing, whether Trump would trade this all to spend his life pursuing his real passions. Where he would be a simple real estate magnate going to the fancy Manhattan parties he was always rejected from. Of all the dime store psychoanalysis I’m doing on this clip, the part I feel most confident in is that he looks genuinely happy here, to a degree he almost never does, talking about the big fancy room he wants to build.

Conservatives want to turn Trump into an American Churchill with more of an emphasis on his unapologetic racism, but grandpa deals doddering out on the White House roof to wow himself with the fictional universe he’s building around him does not exactly convey the image of a strong man. It says a lot about where Trump is in his life that he looks to be perfectly in his element wandering aimlessly on the White House roof talking about things that don’t exist yet, but again, as my finger has been ground down to a bloody stub at this point, I must tap the sign yet again, asserting that maybe there is a reason why this is all so crazy.