Donald Trump personally reworked new designs for Washington Dulles International Airport using tabletop models shuttled in and out of the White House.
Trump, 80, has attacked the government-owned hub for months, calling it “a terrible airport.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in May that the airport would be rebuilt for roughly $22 billion. The president is set to unveil his plans for it on Wednesday, CBS reports.
His notes run deep into the weeds: shuttle buses, where cars should park, how luggage moves, how the place should look. He has grumbled privately about “parking that’s two miles away.” The $22.5 billion plan now scraps the wheeled waiting rooms that have hauled passengers to their gates since 1962. A U-shaped underground train and extra walkways take over, with four new concourses to replace the current gates.
Trump ran the contest himself, summoning developers and financiers to pitch him at the White House. He rejected a rippling roofline from Ferrovial, the infrastructure group behind the new Terminal One at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and a passenger bridge from engineering firm Jacobs, built high enough for jets to taxi beneath it.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, went further, offering to pay for the job, deliver it, and then run Dulles itself. That would have taken the airport and its revenues off the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), the agency that has leased and operated Dulles and Reagan National from the federal government since 1987.
United Airlines, which flies about two in three of the airport’s passengers, worked hard to kill BlackRock’s bid. The winning plan instead leans on the MWAA’s tax-exempt bonds, with United contracting for the build and repaying the debt from airport revenue.
Dulles joins a spree of construction and renaming projects in the capital and Trump’s Florida base. Palm Beach International Airport became President Donald J. Trump International Airport on July 9, the first named for a sitting president, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law stripping Florida counties of the right to name their own airports. The rebrand could cost $5.5 million.
Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat whose district takes in the affected neighborhoods, says a separate FAA no-fly zone over Mar-a-Lago has pushed departing flights over 11,000 homes.
Crews demolished the White House East Wing in October 2025 for a ballroom Trump priced at $200 million, then $300 million, then $400 million. Internal records from Clark Construction, the contractor on the job, put the wider project at $600 million, with $307 million of that billed to taxpayer-funded agencies including the Secret Service.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was repainted “American flag blue” this spring. Trump put the job at $1.5 million to $2 million, with the awarded contracts topping $14.8 million. An algal bloom turned the waters a brilliant, slimy green, and it has again been emptied for repairs.
The Kennedy Center, which Trump tried to have renamed after himself after he packed its board with allies, shut on July 6 for a $257 million rebuild that keeps it dark for two years. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the board, said trustees had treated it “like a personal vanity project.”
Renderings released in April show a 250-foot Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle, the roundabout beside Arlington National Cemetery, dwarfing the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial across the water. Estimates have put the price at around $100 million, though the project faces lawsuits from veterans groups who’ve slammed it as an insult to service members buried at Arlington.
Preservation groups sued in June over the $40 million National Garden of American Heroes, a statue park planned for West Potomac Park, arguing Congress had banned new memorials on that stretch of the Mall. The White House Rose Garden lawn was also paved over in August 2025 for a Mar-a-Lago-style patio, while Trump himself has embarked on a gold-furnishing blitz in the Oval Office—even installing parts of it himself, with the help of a little superglue.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
