President Donald Trump on Thursday shifted focus amid an Oval Office full of White House officials and pharmaceutical executives — and with the U.S. war in Iran entering its eighth week — for an extended ramble about hiring his hotel company’s preferred swimming pool builder to renovate the historic reflecting pool on the National Mall.
The president had been listening to executives from Regeneron — the company behind the Covid-19 treatment that saved his life when he contracted the virus in October 2020 — when he segued from talk about returning semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S. to the previously unannounced renovations he ordered up at the White House and around Washington.
