For most American presidents, an active interest in the arts and in culture more widely has offered a way of showing a more human face to the public. Writing while a government shutdown was still going on, one commentator set Donald Trump against that pattern.

Most recent administrations have treated American popular culture as something to celebrate and promote, and have made that a central concern. Richard Nixon played piano accompaniment for the singer Pearl Bailey, and the jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie performed at Jimmy Carter's White House. Fleetwood Mac got back together to play Bill Clinton's inaugural celebration, and James Brown performed for George W Bush. A long line of famous performers appeared during Barack Obama's presidency. Musicians were not the only guests, either: earlier administrations regularly invited scholars, novelists, artists and film-makers. Many presidents have also met comedians in person at the White House Correspondents Dinner, an annual fixture since 1921.

Trump's record is thinner. Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, two right-wing rock musicians, have visited him, although neither of them performed. He listened, apparently with enjoyment, to a long Oval Office monologue from Kanye West. He has attended no White House Correspondents Dinner at all during his time in office. The writer links Obama's well-known public mockery of him at the 2011 dinner to the intense personal hostility Trump feels towards his predecessor. The writer sees a White House strangely short of life.

Culture in any form appears to leave Trump himself unmoved, and the writer offers an episode in Paris as evidence. At the Bastille Day ceremony in 2017, a French army band played a medley arranged from songs by Daft Punk. French ministers and military personnel answered the band's exact playing and marching with cheers and applause. Trump sat through the same performance with his arms crossed, looking bored and bad-tempered, as though, the writer concludes, the whole display made no sense to him whatsoever. Since the 2016 election, the writer claims, the White House has shown no cultural activity or appreciation at all. That detachment, in the writer's judgement, makes for an alarming feature of his character.