Donald Trump is dumping the wreckage of his East Wing teardown onto a public park in D.C.—and locals are fuming.
Since reducing the White House’s historic East Wing to nothing but mangled metal and rubble to make way for his gigantic $400 million ballroom, the 79-year-old president has been piling the debris onto East Potomac Park, where he plans to build a luxury golf complex.
According to The New York Times, a National Park Service memo estimated that Trump will end up offloading some 30,000 cubic yards of soil, or around 2,000 truckloads, onto the park, which is already home to an affordable public golf course.
East Potomac Golf Links was managed by a nonprofit, National Links Trust, until Trump terminated its 50-year lease soon after he began destroying the East Wing in October.
The billionaire president, a golf course developer, told reporters last month that he would turn the links into “a beautiful world-class U.S. Open-caliber course,” yet another piece of his tacky makeover of the nation’s capital.
“Ideally, we’re going to have major tournaments there and everything else. It’s going to bring a lot of business into Washington,” he said.
But locals fear Trump’s plan to transform the course into a championship-level complex would price out everyday golfers, who now pay just $42 for 18 holes, a rare bargain. At Trump’s Miami golf course, the cheapest round costs $215, according to The Times. A hot dog goes for $24.
“It’ll be a real loss for a lot of people in the city,” Bryan King, a 68-year-old mural painter from Arlington, Virginia, told The Times while playing at the course. “I’m not happy about it.”
“There’s plenty of very expensive country clubs in this area already,” his son Eamon King said. “This has always been kind of, like, the people’s course.”
But when reached for comment by the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the golf course “decrepit” and said Trump was restoring “glamour and prestige.”
“President Trump promised to make D.C. safe and beautiful again for all its residents and visitors by removing violent criminals from the streets, cleaning up the parks, and making long-overdue renovations to public lands,” Rogers said in a statement.
“As a private citizen, President Trump built some of the greatest golf courses in the world, and he is now extending his unmatched design skills and excellent eye for detail to D.C.’s public golf courses. The President and his extraordinary team will redevelop these decrepit golf courses in our nation’s capital to restore glamour and prestige.”
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