Despite President Donald Trump’s claim to reporters that he himself was paying for an upgrade to a White House walkway, documents show the money actually came from the National Park Service budget.
The path between the Oval Office and the White House residence was redone earlier this year at a cost to taxpayers of $689,232, The Atlantic reported. That’s an expense Trump, 80, said in March he would personally cover.
When asked about the renovations during an Oval Office press gaggle in March, Trump said: “It’s a great contrast. The white [walls], with the black. The black is going to be on the walkway. It’s going to be clean. The thing I do best. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s a beautiful, black granite.”
A reporter then asked who was paying.
“Uh, paid for by… me,” the president told CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe, after a long pause.
But records indicate that the National Park Service covered the cost of the new walkway, which, along with some other masonry work and repairs, totaled $1.3 million.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interior for comment, but did not hear back.
A year earlier, over $300,000 was spent on a “rush job for POTUS,” removing stucco from the colonnade so Trump could install plaques and pictures, some of which appear to depict former presidents. Joe Biden, for example, is represented by an autopen signature.
The spending in D.C. is reportedly straining the Park Service budget, with important projects being sidelined to accommodate Trump’s cosmetic changes to the nation’s capital.
Taxpayer spending on projects in the National Capital Region has increased 92 percent over the past year, according to the budget documents cited by The Atlantic.
To meet these demands, the Park Service is drawing on maintenance accounts and more than $100 million in fees collected almost entirely from national parks across the country, the report said.
That means other projects and repairs within the Park Service’s responsibilities are being delayed, defunded, or canceled.
More than 900 Park Service projects expected to be funded this year received no money, the report said.
That includes roughly $424,000 for guardrail replacement on the cliff edge of Black Canyon in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park—an upgrade described in the report as needed to address a “significant safety hazard for visitors.”
Instead, Trump is busy reshaping D.C. in his own image, undertaking White House renovations, controversial and seemingly botched Reflecting Pool repairs, and the refurbishment of statues and fountains.
