In the Oval Office, the gilded fireplace glinted behind a tableau assembled for a children’s podcast: a plush bald eagle perched at the president’s elbow, tables built from stacks of oversized books, and a globe fashioned from Lego bricks. It was here, in a room he has called the most powerful piece of real estate in the world, that Donald Trump sat down with Second Lady Usha Vance to read a picture book to young viewers. The book, Presidents Play!, was a cheerful catalogue of past commanders-in-chief at leisure—swimming, riding, bowling. But within moments of opening it, the president abandoned the text and began a running commentary that was less story time than a guided tour of his own preoccupations.

Flipping past an illustration of John F. Kennedy sailing, Trump pronounced him “the second-most good-looking president,” leaving the identity of the first unspoken. William Howard Taft, famously heavy, prompted a warning to himself: “I have to be careful because I don’t want to supersede his record.” He mused that he had not worn a bathing suit “in a long time” and doubted he would look good in one. Barack Obama, depicted shooting basketballs, was dismissed as unlikely to be a good player and certainly not Masters material on the golf course. Even the book’s depiction of a White House creek became a chance to plug the ballroom he is building on the same spot. The performance was a concentrated display of Trump’s signature mode: every subject, however distant, bends back toward the self.

The podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady, is designed to promote child literacy, a mission that previous guests have honoured by simply reading aloud. Trump’s appearance, however, quickly drew a different kind of attention. On social media, users questioned whether a man who admits he reads mostly newspapers—and “usually read stories about myself”—was the right ambassador for a reading initiative. Viewed from Washington, the episode also highlighted a contrast with recent predecessors: Barack Obama found solace in Gandhi and Mandela, George W. Bush reportedly read two books a week, while Trump’s literary habits have long been a subject of public curiosity. The backlash, though predictable, underscored a cultural fault line: the tension between the ceremonial role of the presidency and the unvarnished persona of its current occupant.

As the recording wound down, Trump floated the idea of inviting Obama, Joe Biden, and the Bushes to the White House to watch a football game together. “The press would go wild,” he said, with evident relish. It was a fleeting glimpse of a parallel universe in which the presidency is a club of amiable rivals, not a battlefield. Then the moment passed, and the camera returned to the Lego globe and the stuffed eagle, silent witnesses to an episode that, like so many of Trump’s public appearances, had become a portrait of the artist as an old man, still captivated by the stories he finds most compelling: those about himself.