President Donald Trump’s latest pride and joy? The grass in the parks of the nation’s capital.
Trump, in a post-midnight interview with conservative radio host and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root, defended his focus on the condition of the grass around Washington, D.C.
“You know, people laugh, ‘Oh, he’s changing the grass.’ Like, it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal,” he said.
“The grass, you know, grass has lives just like people have lives. And this grass has been there for like 50, 60 years. And we’re doing a job. This place looks so beautiful.”
Trump said that since he took office, Washington D.C. “went from the worst city in the whole country to the best city in the whole country.”
Root agreed, saying he had noticed a change for the better in D.C.
“[There] used to be homeless everywhere, scary at night,” Root said, going on to say that in the past few months when he’s visited D.C. there were “no homeless”.
Trump, who famously places a lot of importance on aesthetics, has made looks one of the main focuses of his second term. From the 24-karat gold accents added to the Oval Office to the exaggerated Mar-a-Lago face that women in his inner circle have begun sharing, the grass is his latest physical obsession.
While Trump seems bothered by the laughs he’s gotten for his grass fixation, that’s hardly the remodeling project of his that has faced the most backlash.
Most recently, his $14 million makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become a national drama.
Trump, without any evidence, blamed “vandals” for destroying the pool “in the dead of night” when in reality, his no-bid contractors did a shoddy job.
The president needed the pool to be “American flag blue” by the country’s 250th birthday celebrations on July 4, which is why the administration rushed contracts.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism,” Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in her motion to the court, dismissing charges against the accused vandals.
Trump’s other presidential priority has been to build a $400 million ballroom at the White House. The Washington Post reported last month that invoices for the project, which does not have congressional approval, put its cost at $600 million, with more than half coming from tax dollars.
A federal appeals court ordered the president to halt the construction of the 90,000-square-foot project on Friday.
Trump has vowed to appeal. The grass may be the least of his problems.
