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| Hotel Commodore, on East 42nd Street at Lexington, 1970s, via an exceptionally modest blog called "Random Musings". Pretty sure the gray wall at right is the base of the glorious deco Chrysler Building. |
Trump: "Now we have a big decision to make. Do we take the pavers that are red -- the red, brick pavers -- and do we change them into a granite?"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 3, 2026 at 2:39 PM
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And Maggie Haberman comments, in her book promo interview with Ezra Klein, “If
you looked at a chart of his mind share — this I will say about getting into
his mind: Seventy percent of it would be on his renovations.”
It occurred to me that there's a reason nobody has figured out yet for this obsession with "renovations" as Maggie calls them, connected with something we've understood for a while: that there's a world where Trump really feels pretty comfortable. Where he has felt comfortable for a good 50 years, since 1975, when he first formed a partnership with the Hyatt Organization to buy the skanky old Commodore Hotel next door to Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan and and spend $100 million to turn it into a Grand Hyatt, is in the guise of Don the Builder ("Can you fix it?" "Yes I can!").
