President Donald Trump gestures at the site of ongoing construction of the planned White House ballroom in Washington, D.C., May 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump seems more fixated on his never-ending construction and renovation projects than anything else, and according to former CNN anchor Jim Acosta, this reveals that, on some level, he knows that he is "terrible at being president."
Acosta served as a prominent correspondent and anchor for CNN from 2007 until 2025, and made an appearance this week on the latest edition of "Fast Politics," the podcast hosted by his fellow commentator, Molly Jong-Fast. During the conversation, the pair got around to discussing the sorry state of the Iran war, with Acosta comparing Trump's hopes for the conflict to his shady tactics for making himself seem like a good golfer.
"He thinks that he can win the Iran war in the way that he wins his golf tournaments at Bedminster, where the caddy dumps a little ball out of his pocket," Acosta said. "He's wishing that the caddy, that Pete Hegseth, would dump a golf ball out of his pocket, so in some way he could win the war in Iran, and there have been stories like they're looking for ideas. They're looking for new, thinking-outside-the-box ideas on how to win the war in Iran."
Acosta further touched on recent reporting suggesting that Trump's war with Iran has "depleted much of our long-range missile capacity," calling the development "a big old, industrial-sized, Donald Trump-sized f—— up." He also suggested further that Trump might be quietly admitting to the world that he knows how bad he is at handling things like wars, pandemics and the other "big things" that come along with being the president.
"Who could have seen that the man who bankrupted all the casinos would be just so terrible at being president?" Jong-Fast said. "Even though the last time he was president, he killed lots of his supporters by telling them not to wear masks."
"And I think that's why he's been focused on, like, building a helipad and putting new grass in at the White House and changing the columns and things like that," Acosta said. "Maybe it's dawned on him he's also bad at the big things, like maybe running a pandemic is just not his thing. Well, maybe winning a war is just not his thing."
In support of this idea, Jong-Fast highlighted recent comments from longtime Trump reporter and author Maggie Haberman, who noted that during one of her visits to the White House, "all he was interested in was the real estate."
"He's good at slapping his name on s——," Acosta added. "He's good at marketing things to people that have disposable amounts of money, and not so disposable amounts of money as it turns out many cases like crypto, but his specialty has always been being a shyster and being a guy who pulls a fast one, and that just ain't good enough, and why we're learning this lesson all over again a second time around."
