The Pomp and the Politics of Trump’s D.C. Makeover

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Now, a massive claw structure stands on the South Lawn of the White House and under it a UFC fighting ring. Thousands gathered to watch the first fights on President Trump’s 80th birthday with more scheduled for the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. This is just one example of the president’s controversial reshaping of historic landmarks from the demolition of the East Wing to putting his name on the Kennedy Center last December. This was removed over the weekend after a judge ruled the installation illegal. Washington Post journalist Dan Diamond has been keeping a close eye and he speaks with Michel Martin about what these projects reveal.

 

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Bianna. Dan Diamond, thank you so much for joining us.

 

DAN DIAMOND: Michel, thanks for having me.

 

MARTIN: You’ve been reporting for months on all the building projects that this administration that President Trump has initiated. So for people who don’t live in the Washington area, who don’t follow this, give me the short list of just what comes to mind. Like, what are we talking about here?

 

DIAMOND: How could I forget them? So, the president tore down the East Wing in October to start building the planned White House Ballroom. Around that time, we also saw the first mockups of what we now know is the triumphal arch that he’s trying to build just on the outskirts, essentially of DC, right on the border with Virginia. We saw in recent weeks a project to resurface and renovate the reflecting pool. The President wants to build a statuary garden in one of Washington’s parks. And that’s not even counting, Michel, the dozens of other projects, smaller projects like renovating fountains, cleaning up parts of the city. Some of those things, very controversial, other things many DC residents are happy about.

 

MARTIN: Well, the fountains for sure. I’ve seen that on my – I live in Washington, so I see like on my neighborhood, you know, chat board people are like, yeah, I kind of did like the fountain. Also, the golf courses, there’s a public golf course – two public golf courses in DC and I think there’s also in Maryland too as well. Is that right? Do I have that right?

 

DIAMOND: That’s right. So the president is also working to redevelop several golf courses here in Washington and then nearby in Maryland, the one in Washington, East Potomac Park, that’s a part of Washington, where for years I’ve gone to go running, people go biking. The President wants to turn it into a world class golf course. We have this muni course, this course that’s open at the public right now. And then there are two courses at Andrews Air Force Base that President Trump has enlisted Jack Nicklaus, the famous golf player and course designer to come and redevelop too. That has sparked a bit of a standoff with Wes Moore, the Maryland Governor. Trump is claiming that Wes  Moore is getting in the way of quickly redeveloping those golf courses. My colleague Aaron Cox and I talked to Maryland officials who say they don’t understand what Trump’s so angry about. They’re working with them. They might just not be working as quickly as Trump wants them to, which I think is a theme here, Michel. Trump wants to do all these things and wants to do them as quickly as possible and preferably during his term.

 

MARTIN: Okay. So that’s another question I was gonna ask you. When you take all these together, is there a theme that emerges? Is there a kind of a through line to all this?

 

DIAMOND: Absolutely. I think President Trump thinks of himself, talks about himself as a builder at heart. This was his career before he became a politician. He thinks he’s good at it, he enjoys it. He would rather do this kind of work than almost anything else. And we’ve reported on conversations that he’s had in the White House where he’s been talking about some important national security issue or health issue, and it gets diverted to these construction projects. He will wave to people in the Oval Office, say, take a look at what I’ve done here on the campus, the changes I’ve made right outside the office. The new colonnade, for instance, that he put in or the changes to the Rose Garden. He is very proud of these things. In some cases, maybe these were changes that needed to happen, but in many cases, there are things that Trump just wanted to have happen, and he sees it as the legacy that he’s going to leave behind as the builder president.

 

MARTIN: I was gonna ask you about that. When you talk to Trump administration officials about these projects, what do they say? What did they say they’re doing?

 

DIAMOND: It depends on the project. So the White House Ballroom, we’ll start with that. That is something that has captivated the nation, I think. we’ve seen the reaction. My colleague Jonathan Edwards and I wrote the first story about the East Wing being demolished. So we’ve heard since October thousands and thousands of comments, and we’ve seen public reaction, maybe even in the millions of people who have thoughts on seeing part of the White House torn down. There are members of the administration who say, look, we don’t think that we should have this big a ballroom, but could we use more space? I don’t know, Michel, if you’ve been in the West Wing or in the White House, it’s actually like, kind of small and I think the vision for the White House was that it was not going to be a castle. It was not going to be imposing. It was supposed to have this graceful symmetry and simplicity. So when President Trump is trying to add a very large ballroom that is essentially twice the size of the White House mansion, there are folks, even some Democrats who say, look, we could use more space, but is this the amount of space? Is this the kind of structure that should be built? Probably not. So I think the White House Ballroom is one area where some Trump officials might offer some acknowledgement of, it’s just too big. 

 

But then there’s a project like the Reflecting Pool, which the president moved very quickly in the past couple weeks to do. He went around all the normal legal reviews, didn’t get sign off from Congress, just went ahead and did it. And there are many Trump officials who are pointing to that, including the President, who say, look, this is a playbook for what he’s trying to do. These kinds of projects can be done quickly, they can be done less expensively, and they can be done effectively. Because the Reflecting Pool, as of today as we’re talking, it does look pretty good. This is what President Trump is trying to do. So the project kind of depends on what reaction you’re gonna get. I will say that Trump officials have learned to sing from the Trump hymn book on everything. So it’s hard to get them even on things that might be somewhat controversial to be outright critical of the President.

 

MARTIN: A large part of your reporting is process. It’s the what, and it’s also the how, and what is the through line on process, like, whether it’s the ballroom, the arts, the reflecting pool, or putting his name on the Kennedy Center, which, you know, technically the board made that decision, but he handpicked that board and made himself the chairman. So, you know, so here we are. The way he’s gone about these things is also a big part of the story. What is that?

 

DIAMOND: Well, you’re absolutely right. I think President Trump wants to move as fast as possible and as exhaustively as possible. So what I mean by that is he will clear out these federal boards, these commissions that historically were apolitical. They might have had people on them for years serving across multiple presidencies. President Trump and his team have figured out that if you say, fire, all the Commissioners of Fine Arts, these experts in architecture and sculpture and art, who historically might have taken a project like the White House Ballroom asked months or years of questions, send it back to the drawing board, said, this project is way too big. It should be half the size. That review team doesn’t exist anymore. 

 

The people that President Trump has put on that commission include his young executive assistant, include some people who currently serve in the Trump administration. The chairman of that commission has been very much an ambassador for President Trump’s ideas. He doesn’t seem like someone who’s objectively weighing in. He’s going around the world talking about how great President Trump’s ballroom will be. So that is a very big difference, I think President Trump is on the verge of getting what he wants here because he has figured out that if these commissions are on his side, and if he can find these loopholes where he might not need to go to Congress, like soliciting private money to pay for things, really the only vestige of resistance is in the courts. And it’s unclear as of now whether the highest court, the Supreme Court, will reign in Trump when those projects get in front of them.

 

MARTIN: You started our conversation by pointing out that the White House, the Executive Mansion, a number of these other projects in the national capital have a very intentional design. And it is meant to evoke modesty. It is meant to be the opposite of kingly. And the even sort of the planning of where these monuments are placed, or how they are placed and how they are positioned in relation to one another is also part of a long process of thought and deliberation. So the arch, for example, it interferes with the sight lines between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, where many of our nation’s most important war heroes are interred, former presidents are interred there, former members of Congress are interred there. So I’m just wondering if he’s ever discussed why he thinks his aesthetic vision is superior to that of the people who’ve gone before whose design principles reflect, are meant to reflect larger community values.

 

DIAMOND: What the president maintains is that he’s taking these spaces and places that were designed with this intentionality, with this modesty, and he is improving them. Something like the triumphal arch, the President and his team have argued with some justification that there was a structure originally envisioned for the place that they want to build the arch.

 

I think I wrote the first story on this, Michel, back in October, that if you go back to the McMillan plan, and I was looking at this with some experts, there was some kind of undefined thing that might be in this traffic circle that we have today. Nothing was ever built. And there are people, people who don’t like the Trump Arch, but, but people who say, look, maybe there should be something there. There’s nothing there in this space. The issue isn’t that Trump is building, it’s what he’s building there. And you’re right, that the arch as we and other news outlets have, have shown it is going to block views. That is why military veterans have brought a lawsuit. The White House Ballroom, for instance, also something that’s going to change the interaction of people as they walk past the White House grounds and try to look at the White House mansion.

 

I was in court about two weeks ago as the Trump administration argued in defense of the ballroom, and the federal judge, who I believe, was appointed by President Obama, was questioning the Justice Department lawyer who said, look, if you don’t like the view, just go find another view. And the judge held up her hand like this, and she said, so what you’re saying is, you know, hold your hand like this, and when you look at the White House and it won’t bother you. Which is kind of a crazy argument, right? Like, we shouldn’t have to hold our hands in funny ways to look at these monuments. We should have a public conversation about what these monuments might do and what they might change, rather than going full speed ahead on changing these historic landscapes in Washington DC

 

MARTIN: Who’s paying for all this?

 

DIAMOND: Depends on the project. In some cases, it may well be the American taxpayer. In other cases it is going to be private donors, people who have given a Trump on a number of different projects. Rich Americans. I should say that Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, which he’s the owner of the Washington Post. Amazon’s given money, Google’s given money, Palantir, these major corporations that in many cases have business before the Trump administration. So we’re still finding out who’s paying for, say, the triumphal arch, but my understanding is that many of these projects are going to dip in to private money that Trump is raising on his own.

 

MARTIN: Is that legal?

 

DIAMOND: We’re gonna find out. I have been following the court case with my colleague Jonathan Edwards over the ballroom. And Judge Leon, who was an appointee of a Republican president, was very skeptical of this idea of using private donations to pay for the ballroom. He called it a Rube Goldberg contraption. Alluding to one of those funny things, you know, that it sort of works eventually, but it has all these different steps. The White House is arguing that they can raise the private donations, they can use the gifts because of these different authorities that they have this judge appointed by a Republican president was skeptical of that. We’re gonna find out if other judges agree, and there are similar ideas to pay for, say, the statutory garden, the triumphal arch. But all we know right now, Michel, is that there hasn’t been full transparency over who’s paid what. Some of this has leaked out in reports and credit to the New York Times and other outlets have found out some of the amounts of money, but we don’t have a full list of all the donors, what they’ve given, and importantly what they have received – if they’ve been promised any special access, if they’ve gotten any special audience with the president, if this is essentially paying to play and buying an audience with the president because you’re giving to a pet project–

 

MARTIN: Have there been many?

 

DIAMOND: I think every project has drawn at least one lawsuit. The ballroom lawsuit is the furthest along. A federal judge ruled to halt the project. That order was stayed. There’s an appeals panel considering whether to let the project go forward or halt it again. My read, having been in court, is that the three judge panel – two of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents – pretty skeptical of the Trump administration arguments. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the ballroom halted one more time. 

 

The litigation around the Kennedy Center President Trump, in some ways, has admitted defeat. He said that he’s going to give the Kennedy Center control back to Congress. Of course, this comes after President Trump driving away many of the acts that were gonna perform at the Kennedy Center. So you could say his work is already done with the Kennedy Center. 

 

There’s litigation around the triumphal arch and whether to pause that project. The Trump administration says it’s too early to pause the project, because technically work hasn’t started yet. There’s been litigation around the Reflecting Pool. The Reflecting Pool job was done so quickly that the judge didn’t even get a chance to rule in that case. And other, other efforts that Trump has undertaken to pursue changes have also drawn litigation to.

 

MARTIN: You know, one of the things that’s sort of fascinating is that I understand that the President and also his supporters, particularly in the administration, say that this is what happens when government functions the way it’s supposed to. When you act with urgency, you get things done. It is also true that many people in the public do get frustrated with the pace of government. 

 

DIAMOND: So Michel, here’s what I point to first. We’ve seen the polling. Virtually all of these projects are opposed by a majority of Americans. It’s not unusual that a major Washington project might draw resistance. Other changes in Washington have been opposed, and this sometimes happens. People like things the way they are, then something gets built and then they end up liking the new thing after all. But it’s fair to say that the ballroom and the arch in particular have drawn negative reviews in multiple polls. And then we’ve also seen waves of public comment, not just like on our stories of the Washington Post, public comment of people weighing in with the federal commissions that are reviewing these projects. We did a study at the Post of, I think, the 35,000 comments that poured in on the ballroom. And 97%, probably in reality, closer to 99% were negative on the project. There have been other commentary periods on other projects, and officials have basically said it’s the same story, unanimous or near unanimous resistance to these ideas. So we know that this exercises Americans, and I think the reason why is these are familiar places. You don’t have to live in Washington, DC to care about the White House, or care about the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery. These are places that have meaning and resonance to Americans, to, in some cases, people abroad. They’re symbols of this country. And the fact that they are maybe getting renovated or fixed, that’s one thing. The fact that these spaces are getting potentially permanently altered – if President Trump builds this large ballroom, there are some Democrats who say, we need to tear that down on day one. But I think there’s a pretty good chance that if the ballroom gets built, Democratic presidents will just learn to live with it. And they’ll wanna use the space in some ways. So President Trump has found this way to impose his will. And it’s not that these things are getting fixed, it’s that one person is deciding how to fix them. And that doesn’t sit well with lots of Americans, including some Republicans.

 

MARTIN: So, looking ahead, if these projects – let’s say for the sake of argument, these projects are in fact completed. Okay. Do you think that, you know, will other presidents look at this as a precedent for sort of remaking the physical landscape to their liking? Or do you think that this is a particular preoccupation of a particular person? What’s your sense of that?

 

DIAMOND: Well, I’d never say no to another builder president or someone like Trump. I mean, who could have imagined Trump until we got Trump? Right? So there may be another president in the future who wants to follow a similar playbook, but I have to imagine that most presidents would be more restrained in how they do things, and also probably have a different priority set. President Trump is devoting a lot of mental energy and time to these projects. I don’t know if another president would care as much about the walkway outside the Oval Office, for instance. But I think we will think – no matter what happens, Michel, there’s now a big hole next to the White House mansion. There are now changes to the reflecting pool maybe it won’t look good in 15 years because we didn’t do all the studies that we should on what the new blue bottom will mean for the algae that grows in the reflecting pool. But this will be a time, I think, where President Trump will have figured out a way, maybe not to achieve all of his projects, but some of them, and put a physical imprint on this city in a way that he thinks will be part of his legacy as President.

 

MARTIN: Dan Diamond, thank you so much for joining us,

 

DIAMOND: Michel, thanks for having me. I’m glad to talk about the Washington Post reporting.