Inside Trump’s Mad Dash to Renovate Washington

I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the word word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds.

“The fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem.”

New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com/games to start playing today. Do you have a minute, we make a podcast called The Daily. Sure. We're in town looking at all of the renovations and construction work that the president's ever taken.

The reflecting pool, Lafayette Park, and the arch. That's going to be built behind us. And we're just trying to figure out what people are thinking about. I think it's a mess. I'm really disappointed because we're here for my granddaughter's 16th birthday.

She wanted to come to D.C., see all the stuff, and I really thought that pool would be finished. I'm very sad that this year our trip, they're renovating the pool because all the other years before they saw very nice views from the pool.

You can see it in a lot today.

From the New York Times, I'm like a babaro. What happened about the reflecting pool? This is The Daily. In Malita, to America's 250th birthday this summer, President Trump is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive renovation of the nation's capital.

“I think it's good, I mean they're fixing it all and making it look pretty.”

I mean this is Washington, you see everyone's going to come here. Depending on where you sit, these projects are either boldly slicing through bureaucratic red tape to bring Washington back to its glory. Love them. I 100% be how them keep making this wonderful D.C. look greatly beautiful again.

All right, tell us about your arch, arch. 100% be an arch as well. Or. I think when things are done, why change them? And then change them again.

It was made that way for reason, why not? They are blowing through every single rule and regulation designed to protect taxpayer dollars and safeguard the historical integrity of the city. I personally don't like any of it. I believe it's all about as you go and not about our country.

And so for me, that doesn't work. So today, we're taking a walking tour of the sites that Trump is remaking with our colleague David Ferrethol, who has been investigating exactly how these projects have come together. And what they will mean for the country's most iconic public spaces.

It's Monday, June 1st. Hey. Hello, David. It's going on then. Pleasure.

You too. Our tour guide has arrived. How are you? Welcome, did you see? Thank you so much.

Thank you for being our tour guide to that. So our plan, if you sign on to it. Yes. It's for you to take us to the biggest construction sites across the Mall. We're going to start where we're standing in front of Lafayette Park in downtown Washington,

D.C., literally a stones throw from the White House. And we're going to go to the reflecting pool, and we're going to end with the arch. But your reporting is best I can tell on all this starts right here in Lafayette Park. So just tell us that story. So I cover government contracts.

I write about how the government spends. It's money and the way that it chooses the people it pays.

President Trump and his second term has been obsessed and very ambitious about

changing Washington, renovating, repairing, improving the physical surroundings of downtown Washington. The place where he works. And those projects are happening all over. And I was really interested in seeing how those projects came together.

What were those contracts like? Who was getting paid? How were they getting paid? And how did they get selected? And my curiosity led me to this one, particularly in the renovation of Lafayette Park, particularly

because of what I found in government contracting record. So more precisely what I didn't find.

“The contract to fix this park is secret.”

It doesn't exist in any of the public databases of government spending. That's unusual. Yes, very unusual for something like this. We're not building a missile launch site and this is not a bunker. There's seem to be no reason why it would be secret.

And then when we did get a copy of that contract, the story we piece together was even more interesting. Now what needs to happen in Lafayette Park is fairly simple. There's a couple of fountains built in the 1960s that don't work. And after talking to many, many people about Washington fountains, I've come to the person

of belief that fountains are just a demonstration of man's hubris, the belief that we

Fountains always bring.

I mean, just to say, like, it's a big fountain.

It's a big fountain, fine of us. It looks like, I don't know, maybe 300, 400 square feet across. It's not the ballagio, but it is a pretty big fountain. There's two fountains. Each of them has sort of two spray rings as they call them, and they don't work.

They haven't worked for a few years. So the job was to just repair those so the water could start flowing again. It's not top secret. It's not particularly hard. It's something that happens in the government all the time.

But what we found was that the contract was given out on a no bid basis. So the government selected the contractor without going through the legally required process of comparing offers and figuring out who could do the best job for the least money. Right. Which is what most people think of is just best practice, whether you're having a tree

taken down in your yard or a deck built on your house. You ask two, three, if you're really ambitious for companies to tell you what they're going to charge you. Right. When it's your money, that seems obvious.

And the reason these laws exist is because the government is not spending its own money, they have to know. They have to make sure that the government follows these procedures so that they're getting the same good deal for us, the taxpayers that we would try to get for ourselves if it was our air conditioner that broke, or our plumbing, or our fountain, or whatever.

Right.

“And what's the administration's rationale for giving this contract out with zero bidding process?”

Well, they've cited an exemption that does exist in the law for urgent situations. These are times when there's no time to seek other bids because there's some sort of emergency going on, often in natural disasters or wartime. They've cited that as a reason not to seek other bids and just go with this bit here. And the urgency in this case is not a war, obviously, or natural disaster.

But just that the president wants this done by July 4th for the 250th. Right. But remember, the 250th anniversary of the country has been on the calendar for 250 years. And also, the Trump administration started talking about this and caring about this last spring. So it's not like this deadline, July 4th, 2026, appeared for the first time out of nowhere

in the beginning of this year. It's something that had been on their calendar from the beginning. And David, once you figure out what's inside this contract, what do you come to understand about how much this one bidding company is charging we the taxpayers for these founts?

Right now, this contract is worth $17 million.

What we were able to tell by looking inside the government's contracting records was that the original estimate the government had gotten from this job and had reached out and the Biden era to an independent estimator to get a sense that I'm sure it ought to cost was about $34 million. And you could tell by looking in the records that the Trump administration had gone into

that and pump that figure up in a couple of ways that contracting officials told us was odd. Such as? Well, they counted inflation twice, they increased it for inflation and then increased it again for inflation. I want to count inflation twice.

Right. Well, they're probably going to do that. And $17 million in the grand scheme of federal funding is not a ton of money just to be clear. Right. It's like half of a wing of a fighter plane.

“How are we to really think about why that number is a big deal?”

It's not a lot of money in the context of the federal government, but it's really emblematic of something that we have seen all over Washington. And in some places all over the federal government, which is that the Trump administration is bypassing the competitive process that is set up in the law to make sure the taxpayers get the best deal and handing out contracts without competition, often to companies that

have some sort of connection to the President and his administration. Okay. Well, since you raised it, what should we know about the company that got this no big contract on the fountains? The company that got these contracts is called Clark Construction.

It's a really large company based in Maryland. It's done government contracts for a hundred years. Yeah. I've seen their flag flying over buildings in New York City. Right.

This is a big company, but they are in a special relationship with Trump because they are the ones building his White House ballroom. And the White House ballroom is not like other federal projects. We don't know how much it's going to cost.

Trump has said 400 million, but we don't really know.

He's also said he may need an additional one billion for security underneath that he would like the taxpayers to fund. He's definitely right. He said he's going to come from all private donations, but then he's also asked for a billion dollars from Congress.

“And we don't really know how much Clark is going to make off of this, right?”

Trump has actually said publicly that Clark is not going to be paid at all. He said that Clark is offered to do this ballroom project for free. We don't think that's true, but it's clear that they have taken on this special relationship and a big project with it seems like uncertain dimensions and also uncertain funding sources all putting themselves in the good graces of Trump for now.

So perhaps the cynic would wonder, is the fountain project with its potentially inflated costs? A thing you give a company doing you a favor. Right, there certainly are people that see it that way. Clark told us they did everything above board, there's nothing sort of wrong about the way to handle this project, but certainly they are getting paid a lot more than the government

originally thought they should get paid for this project and the details of those payments if we hadn't reported them would be totally secret. You can kind of see the logic if you're the president, Clark's already working on my ballroom

take care of that. You're right.

“There is logic and that was one of the things they cited which that Clark was already”

staging its equipment nearby and so it would be easier for them. There's also a concern about security clearance. Clark has security clearance to work inside the White House grounds and sometimes Lafayette Park is closed off for diplomatic events and effectively becomes part of the White security perimeter and it's important to know that the White House does have sort of special

rules for building within the White House grounds, but we are here in the real world right outside the White House fence where all the normal laws are supposed to apply. So what we're seeing is that the approach president Trump has taken to the ballroom which is like let's keep everything secret, you know, let's pick people that the president hand picks is now sort of like bleeding outside the White House grounds into the real world

and this is the first example of it.

In other words, what the president's doing with the ballroom, that's in its own category. It's the White House, it's the president, a lot of it is, we're told private funds, but once we get into Lafayette Park, we're in a whole other world, tax dollars, public space and a legal process that's supposed to apply that's being disregarded and treated as if this is all just an extension of the White House.

That's right.

“So with all that backstory, how's the work actually going?”

Is it going fast? Is it going to be ready? It does seem to be going fast, the work is expanded to a few other things in the park, including some benches and landscaping, but the heart of it is still the fountains. And the fountains we are told, they've tested them, they flow, they're on track to be ready,

the government says forge a live fourth and as we look at them right now, there's still

some sort of blue painters tape around the outside, it seems like the work is still going

on. Right. But when it is ready, I think it's fair to say, it's going to be beautiful. This is a very prime location directly in front of the White House and to have to highly functioning rings of water.

We'll probably make this a lovely destination for tourists, for nearby office workers, the New York Times bureau down there. I could see myself coming here and having a sandwich. We certainly will be beautiful. It's important to know that there are broken fountains, or there were broken fountains and

park service properties all over DC, and President Trump has made those things a priority in a way that no previous President's head is used, park service funding that was meant to serve the whole country, to renovate those fountains. So there are fountains all over Washington, including some that probably the President will

never see in neighborhoods that are used by Washingtonians, that are flowing now for the

first time in a long time, because of what President Trump did.

“Which is, I think, an arguably a good thing, fountains that actually found him.”

Yes. And as we know, this is really the starting point. This is, sort of, speak where the President is getting his feet. And I think that brings us to our next location, which is the reflecting ball. Right.

A much bigger project, and a much bigger pool. So let's take the very long walk from here to the reflecting ball. Let's go. So we're just being paused in front of a security gate outside the White House, where Black SUV is going in.

I think this is the operations for the UFC fight. What's that? I think this is the preparations for the UFC fight. As we get a little bit closer to the reflecting ball, I just wanted to observe some of the sightlines that we can see because they deal so central to the helpless place.

Works. The Washington monuments in front of us behind at the Capitol dome. And if you turn around, you can look directly into the Lincoln Memorial. And these things exist clearly in a line that's super intentional. That's right.

So much of the city is engineered. Even the heights of the buildings, the widths of the avenues, making sure that when you're at one landmark, you can see another and that you sort of get that message of the branches of government, the parts of our history are linked together. Right.

In a country that changes this much and is so focused on progress, Washington is frozen and changes so slowly to provide that kind of reminder. We're reminded both of the origins of our government, but also the history, the creative of that country. And we're not, we don't change that, even small details of that without really really

thinking about it. All right, with that, let's walk through there, we'll watch it in the memorial, too. They're not like people. We'll be right back. [MUSIC]

I'm David Sanger. I cover the White House and National Security of the New York Times. A good deal of reporting is still about serendipity. I've done this for four decades now. You build up experience that gives you a sense of how to be in the right place at the

I happen to be at the White House one day when a somewhat chants encounter with President

Trump led to our four-hour long interview that gave us a real vision into how the President thinks about using power and whether there are any limits on his own capabilities. When I colleagues and I try to explain not only what's happening, but why it's happening, not by word of mouth, but by actually being there, questioning, reporting, uncovering realities that are not obvious.

“If you want to make sure you get your news closest to the source, consider subscribing”

to the New York Times. [MUSIC] Okay, so now that we are at the reflecting ball, and before we talk about this construction work, which you can literally year into that, that'll be being locked in front of us. Just remind us about the place of this reflecting pool on the mall, and it's placed in

the larger Washington DC mythology. So the reflecting pool was built in the 20s along with the Lincoln Memorial, and the point of it is to amplify both the Lincoln Memorial at one end and the Washington Monument at the other, so you stand at one, you look across and you see a mirror image of the other great monument, you see sort of them double, and it was designed to be invisible in that

way. You don't look at the pool to see the pool, you look at it to see a reflection of both the monuments around it, and also the sort of history making events that have happened along the sides of it, which are many, which are many. People may know the affictionalized one, which is the scene in Forest Gump, or Jenny jumps

into the pool, and yet for it. But there also have been many famous real events going back to the 1960s, the I have

a dream speech by Martin Luther King, some huge protests against the million-man march,

million-man march, and the 1990s, gatherings of the left, and the right President Trump counted as the scene of one of his great events after his election in 2016. So just think about how many Americans were seeing them around us today have come here, stood at this place, looked out at this reflecting pool, and thought, you know, I'm standing in the place where history happened.

But of course, the reflecting pool of film and American lore is not what we are looking at right now. No, we're standing in front of a construction site, the reflecting pool is empty of water, instead it has a semi-truck, lots of trailers, generators, a lot of construction equipment, their sandbags, quarter-potty, for a quarter-potty, a barrels of supplies, we're looking

at a very large construction site here. So talk us through the construction that's happening here and how it fits into the larger reporting project you've been up to. Well, the project we're seeing in front of us is another example of the Trump administration

“bypassing the usual competitive bidding process and just handing an important contract directly”

to one company. Okay. And what is that company? Companies called Atlantic Industrial Coding, it's a small company based in a place called New Canton, Virginia, oddly President Trump told the story several times of how this company

was hired. He said, I realized that it was actually just a giant swimming pool, I talked to the swimming pool guys from my golf clubs, I picked the guy who'd done a great job of my golf club in Northern Virginia and I called him and he said, "Can you take care of it?" He said, "Great, you know, I can handle it."

But a pool's a pool, a pool's a pool, and we'll do it like a pool. And that was what President Trump said several times in public. It turns out that's not true, as far as I can tell this company advertisers know experience doing swimming pools. Their experiences and things like coding, highway culverts, fuel tanks, waterproofing things,

but not swimming pools. And I also don't think they've ever worked for the Trump organization.

And now Trump himself has said as much, he said, "I don't know this company and they never

worked for me." Raising again, the question of how they got this job. It's odd that this company, which doesn't have any advertising experience doing even small swimming pools, would be entrusted by the government without any sort of competitive bidding process.

But that is what happened. And this is this company's first time doing work for the federal government. This is their first-ever federal contract. Wow. It's a pretty big stage to make a debut on.

It is. That's right. And what is the scope of work that this company is undertaking here to get this thing fully functioning by the 250th anniversary? Well, we could see that work in front of us.

So one of the things they're doing is spreading a waterproofing compound on the eight-inch thing concrete slabs that are also filling in the gaps or trying to fill in the gaps between the concrete slabs. So that's what's going to adjust the lead. Okay.

“To understand why that was such a risk, I think you need to know a little bit more about”

why the pool has been troublesome and why it needs repair. Okay. The pool has three main problems. The water leaks out between the concrete slabs. There are pipes that connect the pool to its filtration system, which is behind us here

a few hundred yards away. Those pipes often break and leak, which means they have to shut everything down or else the water just leaks out into the ground. And then at the filtration site, there's also a need for a better filter because algae blooms makes the water green and matted and ugly and actually makes it impossible to reflect

So lots of administrations have tried over the years to fix those problems.

“So President Trump, in his first term, started thinking about how to fix the problems”

of the reflecting pool.

And what we're seeing now is that in the second term, he is actually trying to make those

repairs happen. Okay, so it's odd about what the Trump administration is doing. They are doing two of the three things that needed to be done before. They're trying to fix the leaky joints between the concrete slabs. Another contract, not by done by this company, is putting a new filtration system in.

But they're not doing one heat piece, which is not fixing the pipes that connect the pool with that filtration system. And if those don't get fixed and they continue to leak, then the algae problem could recur because you're not getting the water to the place where it's clean. And why wouldn't you just fix this route to stem, fix the pipes permanently restore this

pool? It's a great question. That was the plan, starting in the first Trump administration through Biden, the plan was to do all three of those things, seal the pool, fix the pipes, fix the filtration. Some are this year that fix the pipes thing, got put on the shelf.

They say now they might do it in the fall, but it's not happening now. And until that gets done, what people we've talked to said, it's not a permanent fix. And we see in Park Service documents that the Park Service says, you know, our own people didn't come up with this plan to fix the pool. The person who came up with it is a guy named David S, an administration advisor.

Who is David S? If you look in other documents related to this contract, you see that a guy named David Schutz and Hoffer, who's the general manager of Trump's golf course in Bedminster New Jersey, was advising the Park Service on this job, was helping connect them with other vendors.

We don't know for sure that he is the same David S, but you see that the origins of this whole idea, the whole plan for fixing this pool, have come from outside the Park Service, and it was an idea they hadn't even considered before. So that gives you a sense of how kind of out of the box this solution is.

“What is the price tag that this company is charging all of us to do this work?”

It's charging right now, 13.1 million dollars.

That is notable because it's also different than President Trump first described. He originally said this contract would cost $1.8 million, it's now obviously seven times that. Okay. And doing a why?

This contract is as large as it is in part because the company is charging 20% for overhead and then 20% more for profit. Now we've seen Park Service documents that show that even within the Park Service, people believe that those two percent are just 20% and 20% were excessive and inflated. The Park Service is paying them anyway, in part because they're on a very quick timeline.

The government wanted this work done so badly that it actually told them to start work before they agreed on a price tag. And so that means that later on when they came to haggle over the final price, the pool was already partly underway. The government is very little leverage to come back then and say, hey, listen, we're not

going to pay the full price. You know, would they really threaten to kick them off, you know, with the work partly done. Right. And with everyone understanding that the President wants to get this thing ready for 250

which means we really only have a couple months left. That's right. The original due date for this project was May 22nd.

“Now President Trump is saying the real deadline is July 4th, which I think brings me”

to the final issue with a reflecting pool, which is the President's selection of a very specific shade of blue, which I am looking at and I just want to ask you about. Well, a lot of the pools bottom is painted a dark shade of blue. President Trump said that he had originally wanted to be turquoise like the Bahamas, but that the contractor that he had hired for this trolling that it should be American flag blue.

And so American flag blue is what they've said a lot on a deep navy blue. Yeah, it's a dark kind of blue, dark blue gene blue. That is the color now of most of the pool will be the final color of the entire pool. And the question is, what will it look like when it is filled? People that I've talked to landscape architecture experts say that it probably will not affect

the reflectivity. And what makes it reflective is that it's shallow in its dark and it will still have both of those elements. So in the end, when it comes to the reflecting pool, we have a project that's not going to solve what may be all the big underlying problems.

And because the administration granted this to a single company and didn't put it out for any competitive bidding process, we don't know if somebody might have come along

and said, "Actually, I can do it for less than 13 million, we'll never know that because

of the way that this contract was ordered." That's right. This case really embodies the risks of no-bed contracts, without knowing what other people would charge, without knowing how other people would attack these same problems. It's really hard to know if what they have here is the right solution, the best solution

the cheapest solution. It's impossible to evaluate what else could have been done. We only know what they have. All right, Dave, we have one last stop on this tour and that is the arch. That's right.

We're not going to walk west to the Lincoln Memorial to look across the Potomac River at the future site of the Triumphal Arch. The United States, Triumphal Arch.

This is by far my favorite. I think it's everyone's favorite? Yeah, mine as well.

“Is it something spectacular about going into this little hole?”

Right, it is grand and also intimate, you get inside there. So we just go to this little patch of green here, or do you want to go across the bridge? Can we stand up on it? So Dave, we just scaled a wall, and now we're setting on a patch of grass behind the Lincoln

Memorial, and we've picked an incredible moment to have a conversation about the arch.

Let me explain why. There is currently a protest, a group of people marching against the arch. They have handwritten signs saying no arch. Maybe a tuba. There's a band in there.

There are people beeping, and that volume is on top of all the traffic and the planes going overhead. So just explain to us as we're looking down at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, how the arch is going to fit into the view that we're taking in right now.

“And what you've learned about the process by the arch so far?”

Well, what we're looking at now across the other end of the bridge is a green hillside in Virginia that belongs to Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, with the arch is completed, you will see a very large 250 foot tall. That's 25-story tall triumphal arch, which is a little bit like the arch to triumph in Paris, but bigger, and it will have golden statues, I believe they'll be angels and eagles.

It'll be a really large arch dominating this view. Got to be the biggest new construction in this kind of official stretch of Washington in decades. That's right, it will be something on the scale of or bigger than the Lincoln Memorial. So we haven't built anything that large as a monument on the wall, as you said decades. And how is the president gotten the arch to this point, and how emblematic is it of what we just saw at Lafayette and with the reflecting pool?

Well, there hasn't been any contracts assigned yet, so we don't know if there's going to be no big contracts or not. But it is of a similar vein, and that he is trying as much as he can to avoid or bypass outside oversight. So even to Congress, so there's been, he's made the points of Congress that normally they would have to approve something this large in Washington's monumental core.

But he said they don't need to, because a hundred years ago, another Congress approved a sort of similar sounding project that was never built.

And so it already has congressional approval. That's extremely creative. Yes, it is similar to the other projects, and that they are going as fast as they can to build something as big as they can.

“And what kind of opposition has, or has an it for roused, besides the honking?”

Yes, you can tear on the road. There are a lot of people in Washington and happy about it. There have been some lawsuits filed. There are people who would like to stop this in its tracks. A group of veterans have sued saying that this disrupts the view of Arlington cemetery, but none of them have succeeded so far.

There have been some incremental changes, as a result of some of the review boards that have considered it. It's gotten slightly shorter. I believe some of the lions have come off. But the fundamental shape of it is still for now, the same. The noise we're hearing from the planes is a reminder of one of the big hurdles laying in front of it,

which is actually that this is on the flight path, the approach to Washington National Airport. And there is a concern that the FAA might block it because it will be too much of a constriction on air traffic. So there are some hurdles in front of it, but if I had to bet, I would bet that it's going to be built.

Well, we talked before about sightlines, and I do think it's worth just spending a second on what this arch would change.

Because there are some really specific structures on the hill behind the Arlington Memorial Bridge that relate to the Civil War, relate back to the Lincoln Memorial, and all these kind of reciprocal relationships between the historical monuments of Washington. Okay, so if you'll indulge me as a transplanted Washingtonian, I think this is one of the most remarkable places in Washington. So we're standing here by the Lincoln Memorial, a symbol of the rebinding of North and South. So what's beyond us on the other side of the bridge is Arlington House, which belongs to Robert E. Lee,

was Robert E. Lee's home before he left to become the leader of the top general of the Confederacy. And bridge between the home of the man who tried to tear the Union of Sunder and the President who threw grit and determination made sure that the country stayed pulled right. And the graves of the folks who died to win that war. And so if you're going to block that, right, if you're going to put something in between

these two symbols of the greatest crisis in American history and the reclamation that followed,

that you're putting that there and blocking the view of this incredible piece of American history.

“That's just right across the river. And what is the reason why the President wants to put”

this arch here at this moment? And it's best I can tell and times 3D renderings does show this. It substantially does change the view especially from Arlington House, from Arlington Semetery, back towards the Lincoln Memorial. My reading of it is that he wants an arch. He's talked about how all great cities have arches, London, Paris, Rome, and so Washington needs one. And this is the easiest place to put an arch

because it's a big, empty lawn around with traffic flows. What President Trump says this arch is meant to celebrate is all of us, the 250 years of American history. But it seems in some ways to be more a monument to President Trump and his importance in American history. Did the degree that there's any singular person or cause associated with this arch? It's him. In your strikes me that any change to the official Washington infrastructure makes people

crazy. And I'm remembering the battle that preceded the construction of the World War II Memorial, which we walk through on our way to the reflecting pool. It was in the late 1990s. I was in high school. There was a huge fight about whether that memorial was going to mock up the national mark. Right. And it got built. Yeah, despite that huge battle. And it was really, really pitch, really angry. And now no one thinks twice about it. You walk through it. It's just not that big

ideal. And you kind of can't imagine that there was ever a big battle over it at all. And I wonder if

that's ultimately going to be the case with the arch? Yes, it's going to deprive someone's standing

at the Arlington House of a very specific view back to the Lincoln Memorial. But is that really such a big deal? And we'll people ultimately walk under it, drive under it. And ultimately not think that much about or be grateful for the fact that there's this bold, beautiful arch at the end of

“the moment. I think you are right that if it is built within a few years, everybody will think of”

it as part of the scenery in Washington. Nobody will walk by and say, you know, it doesn't belong. It is the same architectural style as the rest of Washington. So it will stand out for its size, but not for its architecture. The one thing that I think is different from the other monuments that have caused consternation in Washington over the years. And I think of not just over two memorial, but the very modernist Vietnam, more memorial before that is that those other monuments

were monuments to a group of people, people who had sacrificed something with slightly different about this is that there's not like one set of people, this is designed to, to honor one set of people who will come here and feel like, yes, I have my place in Washington that I didn't have before. It's it's either totally abstract or it's about Trump. Okay, but this is a really big but if we look all around us, left, right, front, back, there are monuments to American presidents all

around us. We've talked about Lincoln. We've talked about Washington over there to my left is Jefferson. So in that context, why shouldn't President Trump get what we kind of understand to be a memorial to himself, given how monumentally he has changed American politics, American policy, how the world thinks about America? Well, traditionally we have not let presidents build their own memorials.

“Traditionally you have to leave office that has to be some sort of intervening period in which”

Americans and American history can judge your time and office and decide whether you are worthy of a monumental tribute. And have that monument relates to the way we think of you. We don't give every president, it's not a Grover Cleveland monument around here, right? We give presidents that we decide are worthy of emulation and adoration. We give them a place here in Washington. And Trump has decided to give himself that place effectively and that is very emblematic of who

he's been. All the ways he's discarded the so-called rules of politics, but also the real rules of Washington and succeeded and put his stamp on the country and the world. So in that way, having Trump build his own memorial is very fitting. That said, you can't seal your place in history and trust that it will stay that way. American history will still render some judgment on Trump. You can't just build a monument and

first all that, but he is certainly trying to make sure that he can't be forgotten.

Oh David. Thank you very much. Thank you. After we spoke with David, congressional Democrats introduced legislation seeking to block construction of the arch. Their bill claims that the arch relies on illegal use of public funds without permission from Congress. The bill, which is considered a long shot, is co-sponsored by representative Don Bier's of Northern Virginia, whose district includes Arlington National

countries most how it's faces. In a video recorded in front of the cemetery, Bier's described the arch

as an act of desecration. Unfortunately, those of us who treasure it, are reckoning with a threat to the peace of this sacred place, and to the honor and trust represents a towering 250 foot vanity project that would overshadow the resting place of our heroes and hide it from the view of visitors to the National Mall and Lincoln Memorial. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today. The future of President Trump's controversial”

1.8 billion dollar fund to compensate victims of government weaponization is in growing doubt

after decisions on Friday from two federal judges. One judge temporarily borrowed the fund from being set up, while another reopened illegal case involving Trump and the IRS, whose dismissal appeared to lead to the fund's creation. At the same time, AIDS to the President are increasingly urging him to get rid of the fund amid intense blowback from both courts and from Congress.

“And a cornerstone of the President's plan to celebrate America's 250th anniversary,”

a series of musical concerts on the National Mall, starting later this month, is collapsing.

Over the weekend, Trump called for the music series to be canceled after at least five of the nine performers dropped out. Several of the singers said they had originally believed the event would be non-partisan, only to learn later on that it was being planned and overseen by the President himself.

“Today's episode was produced by Lexi Diel, Mood Zating, Diana Wynn, and Jack Decidural.”

It was edited by Rob Zipko, with help from Liz Obeyl, and contains music by Mary and Luzon, Roney Misto, Dan Powell, Brad Fisher, and Leah Shaw Dameron. Our theme music is by Wonderland. This episode was engineered by a few Shapiro and Alyssa Mox, who was the most popular singer in the world. That's it for the day. I'm Michael Bobard. See you tomorrow.

I'm Gilbert Cruz. This week on the Book Review podcast, our monthly book club meets to talk about Ben Lerder's new novel Transcription. It's really, really a hard part. His 2014 book made the times as best 100 books in the 21st century list, so whenever Ben Lerder puts out something new, it's an event and it's something that needs to be discussed. We could talk about this book all day. It's kind of listen to the book review, wherever you get your podcasts.