A journey to court to face charges of election interference is what prompted President Donald Trump’s insatiable desire to give Washington, D.C., a gaudy facelift, according to an insider.
In August 2023, Trump was headed to the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in the capital to face the charges when he noticed that the city had slumped into dereliction, a former campaign official told Semafor.
There, he hatched his plan to redesign the city in his own image, they said. Just over a year later, he won the 2024 election and, upon taking office in January 2025, set about making his changes.
The official, who was on the campaign trail with Trump, described how the vehicle had to swerve in the middle of the road to avoid debris, and how homeless encampments lined the streets. This rankled Trump, who made his fortune in real estate, they said.
In the 17 months of Trump 2.0, he has changed the city into a monument to his presidency.
His building spree includes a massive new White House ballroom, a towering Triumphal Arch, an “American flag blue” Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool beset by algae issues, a championship golf course makeover, a sparsely attended 16-day Great American State Fair on the National Mall, and the giant “Claw” erected on the White House South Lawn for a much-maligned UFC event.
He has also removed the homeless encampments that annoyed him during that 2023 journey, cleaned graffiti, restored monuments and fountains, increased federal policing, and deployed National Guard troops to the city, despite city officials telling him the latter wasn’t necessary.
He’s not done, according to one administration official. “When he’s motorcading around town, he points stuff out,” they told Semafor. He also brings projects up at random during unrelated meetings and even keeps mock-ups of his vanity projects on his desk.
“He talks about it in pretty much every press gaggle or availability that he does,” one former White House official said.
“We know that he was a builder at heart,” a former official said. “This is clearly something the president cares strongly about.”
However, concern has grown following reports that taxpayers might have to foot the bill for some of the D.C. makeover. “We should have some oversight about who these contracts are going to, that they’re not no-bid contracts, that there’s proper management of those funds,” said Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, a House Oversight Committee member.
The total cost of the president’s various vanity projects across the capital, combining private donations and public funds, is on track to exceed $1 billion, according to Financial Times estimates. The new East Wing ballroom and its security costs alone account for nearly $800 million of that figure.
Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary and the man responsible for all paperwork that reaches Trump’s desk, told the Times that Trump is “intensely involved” in the plans.
Scharf, who was named chair of the National Capital Planning Commission—the federal design and construction review panel that has approved the East Wing project and assessed the Triumphal Arch—said he has had “long conversations” with Trump on flights and on the road discussing “the virtues of Corinthian versus Ionic columns.”
