'If You Can Keep It': Donald Trump’s Washington

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0:39President Trump is working fast to remake the nation's capital to fit his vision. Major construction projects include demolishing the east wing of the White House for his proposed ballroom and a planned 250-foot tall arch that would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial. But that's just the start. The administration has launched a dizzying array of other initiatives, ranging from painting the reflecting pool on the National Mall American flag blue to redeveloping a scenic public golf course with views out over the Potomac and getting the long broken fountains working again at a popular local park. But to get it all done, the White House has blown past safeguards that are there to protect the character of the city.

1:19President fired all six members of the Commission for Fine Arts and replaced them with deputies aligned with his policies. Some are welcoming these changes, like these visitors to the newly repainted reflecting pool. I needed to come down to see if it was actually reflecting, and it wasn't bright blue. I'm impressed, to be honest. It reflects beautifully, and I'm not seeing it being American flag blue. Very happy it opened up in time, not just in time for my trip, but also in time for the 250 celebration. I think it looks beautiful. It looks very dark. It does not look blue, but maybe it's just the way the sun is bouncing off the water.

1:57I was not exactly excited about it in the beginning, but coming here, I'm at least happy that you can still see the memorial and the reflection, which was the whole point of this pool. So the fact that it's not a swimming pool makes me really happy. But as the president moves to transform D.C., what does the lack of oversight say about transparency and about accountability? Where is the money for these projects coming from? I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilich. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Today for our weekly democracy series, If You Can Keep It, we're looking into those questions and more.

2:34We'll be back after this short break. Stay with us.

2:41Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with Alon Cohen, who leads research and development at UFC, to discuss the complexity of using technology to analyze fight data. With kick to the head, it makes contact with the outset of my arm, which I brought up. In our world, that's a blocked strike. But teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how, like when my arm is up, that's a block.

3:23When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not. It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time. That is until IBM entered the octagon. Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Monarch. Monarch is the personal finance app that brings all your accounts into one place so you can track spending, budgets, investments, debt, and goals in one clear view. Monarch automatically surfaces insights to prevent wasted spending, showcase savings opportunities, and save you time above all else.

4:01Manage money the modern way and get half off your first year of Monarch Core with code VALUE at Monarch.com. This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know. I've never seen this happen. This is true? This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A Podcast. We're talking about President Trump's renovation projects across Washington, D.C., and how he's remaking the nation's capital to fit his vision.

4:44Joining us now is Dan Diamond. He's a White House reporter at The Washington Post. Dan, welcome back to the program. Jen, Todd, good to be with you from Geneva, Switzerland, where the president is. Oh, great. Glad you could join us. And with us here in studio is Ed Sterling. He's the senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association. Ed, welcome. Thanks so much. Great to be here this morning. So, Dan, Trump has been on a remodeling spree since the start of his second term. He's decked out the Oval Office in gold, paved over the Rose Garden, demolished the East Wing in October of last year.

5:13And we'll get into some more of the projects. But what is his vision here? What has he said about the point of all of these changes? Well, Jen, it depends a bit on the project. But I think the overall theme is that President Trump likes to do this, thinks he's good at it, and wants to leave his mark on Washington, Washington proper. He was in real estate and a developer and builder before he got into politics. He's spoken about how this is fun for him. It can be a useful distraction. We and other news outlets have reported on how President Trump can spend hours of his day working on these projects and going out of the Oval Office and telling workers what he wants them to do.

5:50So he's very hands-on, and his vision, which doesn't align with past presidents, is one of a lot of gold or neatness. and also hugeness because some of these projects are much bigger than anybody else would say they should be. So let's start with one of the most visible renovation projects. Jen mentioned it. We heard some tourists down on the mall talking about it, the painting of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool down on the National Mall. The work repainting the bottom of that pool, a deep blue, finished at the start of June. The president called it American flag blue. Ed, before we jump into the cost and the contracts, How does it look?

6:30Does it look different than before? Because I've seen a lot of photos. I haven't been to see it. I'll stipulate that. It doesn't look that different to me, is it? Yeah, I mean, I was out there the other night. There was a lot of people out there as well. I mean, it doesn't look that different, quite honestly. But I think the reality is that time will tell. I mean, you know, it's no secret that the reflecting pool and the other national parks within Washington, D.C. have needed a lot of help and investment for a long time. And that's just one part of the puzzle. I mean, you know, part of the issue, whether it's water quality or, you know, the reflection has been because of a part of, you know, there's a systemic issues related.

7:05That's water from the Potomac River that flows into, you know, the nearby tidal basin. And there's all types of infrastructure underground, whether it's a water filtration system, pipes that connect the water. You know, those have have yet to been addressed. And I think, you know, time will tell essentially in terms of with this particular investment and what the difference will be. But, you know, not for nothing, I mean, this is a really unique reflecting pool. There's nothing like it in the world. And because of that, you know, there's a tremendous amount of safeguards that were built into whenever there were changes that could be made to that, that there was a tremendous amount of input, scientists reviewing this, historic preservations.

7:40And that process was skipped altogether. So quite honestly, we have no idea what even was actually done here and let alone what the long-term implications will be. Well, let's talk about the cost. The reflecting pool garnered a lot of attention. about how the cost grew from$2 million that the president initially said it would cost to the$14 million it cost at the end of the project. Dan, what happened? Well, a few things happened, Jen. One, the project got bigger. It wasn't just resurfacing the basin. It became repairing some cracks as well. But we also don't know everything that happened. There's been some great reporting, particularly by the New York Times, about some of the challenges and decisions behind the scenes.

8:21But this process was not done in public. This was a no-bid contract that the president awarded very quickly, has said repeatedly that he's doing this at a fraction of the cost that, say, President Biden wanted to do. I should say that I've reached out to Biden officials about the figures that President Trump has quoted talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. They seem befuddled by where the president's getting this. But in a normal process, we would have a lot more visibility into what the project was, how it was decided, whether, as I think Ed made the point to my colleague in the Post, whether the American flag blue would lead to problems like more algae.

8:56But we didn't get any of that. We got a short-circuited runaround where the president said it was going to be done very quickly, and it didn't meet his initial goals. And here we are with a project that we still have questions about. So Atlantic Industrial Coatings is the company that sprayed all that blue on the drained reflecting pool. People saw that on television and online, I'm sure. You talked about the no-bid contract here, Dan, that skipped the normal bidding process for federal contracts. But what do we know about this company? Donald Trump initially said they did a great job on one of his pools at one of his golf clubs.

9:31He later said he didn't know anything about them. Who are they and what is their relationship with the president who fast-tracked their $14 million contract. Well, Todd, they are a company where the owner, to his credit, has picked up the phone for me and other reporters who call. He doesn't stay on the phone very long, but he'll always take calls. They are a small outfit. I don't know for sure how they got in front of the president. The president has spoken about his redesign of swimming pools at his clubs and said that he now knows how to fix pools, and that's what he's trying to do here. But again, these are things that would have been not only sorted out, we probably would have gone through a much longer process of what does need to be fixed?

10:13Who is best positioned to fix it? How long will it take? What will the process be? We didn't get any of that. The president announced essentially in late April that this project was underway before any of that public discussion could happen. The federal government issues billions of dollars in contracts each year. And the bid process is designed to help ensure taxpayer dollars aren't wasted, that they're being paid to reputable companies. And I don't think anyone would argue it's a perfect system. But Ed, how does that process typically work? Well, I think right now one of the concerning things is that, you know, as Dan was mentioned, I mean, everything is happening behind the scenes, usually when any major construction process.

10:52You know, another one just finished that was done that was, you know, incredibly well done, the restoration of the seawall on the tidal basin in D.C. So if you visit during Cherry Blossom time or the Jefferson Memorial. Again, that was a huge contract that was issued. And that was done, you know, following all the proper protocols and processes, looking at all the different alternatives that would be out there to make sure that the National Park Service is a good steward of taxpayer dollars. The reflecting pool was not done this way. And we don't know much about the company. And I think, frankly, what's really concerning as well is that the staff from the National Park Service, you know, there's only one Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on the planet.

11:27And the National Park Service has the staff usually in place that are uniquely trained and have the institutional knowledge and the expertise to essentially help kind of map out the future of what the care of what a historic resource like that should look like. And unfortunately, you know, a lot of those staff have either been pushed out or left the National Park Service and never been rehired. And now what we're seeing is processes like this where, you know, essentially everything's happening behind the scenes and we have no idea who's actually doing the work. I just want to mention here that we did reach out to the White House and Department of Interior for this conversation, but we did not hear back the invitation stance.

12:04So, Ed, what does the National Mall look like right now? If you were trying to get around over the weekend, you would have run into a lot of people on hand for viewing UFC fights on the White House lawn, on Donald Trump's birthday, events celebrating the American 250th anniversary are also underway around the Mall. How would you describe what the mall looks like now under one month from July 4th? You know, to be totally honest with you, the National Mall looks like a bit of a circus right now, a circus that's under construction, heavily under construction. There's a tremendous amount of activity that's happening on the National Mall this summer.

12:39You just mentioned the UFC fight, that it was quite a bit of infrastructure that was built on the mall. There's something called the Great American State Fair that's about to kick off that's happening that, you know, is a tremendous amount of development on the mall. You know, but I think there's also a lot of construction underway, whether it's the gilding of statues, whether it's, you know, you see it at the golf course where construction potentially could be kicking off. I mean, you know, there's a lot going on. But that being said, I mean, visitation seems to have never been higher. I mean, people are visiting there.

13:07We know 32 million people visit the National Mall every year, which is why we want to see investment in this park, but not at the expense of the rest of the national park system. Well, the east wing of the White House was torn down in October of last year to make room for a proposed 90 ,000 square foot ballroom, Donald Trump's dream construction. The president says that construction will be completed in 2028. He toured the ballroom construction site in May. So all of this was paid for by myself. And because I keep hearing like I'm not we are making a gift of this. This is a gift. This is not going to be paid for by the taxpayer.

13:42that we have a judge that thinks it's a terrible thing that we're making a gift. He said it's terrible that we're making a gift that should be paid for by the taxpayer. That's one I've never heard before. Well, Dan, the president, I think it's fair to say, is obsessed with the ballroom. He talks about it all the time, even during briefings and events that are about other subjects. It's been mired in court battles. He says the ballroom will be funded entirely by private donations and nothing else. How much is the construction expected to cost? Todd, it's hundreds of millions of dollars. We don't know, or at least we haven't publicly reported the final cost yet.

14:19The president has said, alternatingly, between$300 and$400 million for the ballroom, depending on the fixtures and how nice pieces of it will be. But you're right that he is fixated on it. We did an analysis at the Post. My colleague, Enns Morse, and I went through his remarks and found that on one out of every three days, the president was invoking the ballroom. And this was maybe a month or two ago when we did this. I think the president's frequency has only gone up, which means he's mentioning this project more often than a number of other priorities for his political party and certainly for the American people.

14:53But the total cost of the ballroom goes beyond the ballroom itself. There is an underground military component of which we don't know everything about. The White House has asked Congress for several hundred million dollars, a little over$200 million for security features related to the ballroom, related to the underground complex. So far, Congress has not given that money. But that would be taxpayer money. That would not be private donations, which is against what the president had said for so many months. Well, you mentioned private donations, Dan. And again, the White House belongs to the American people, not to any individual president.

15:29But how much do we know about the money that has been raised so far and who's making those donations? Jen, we have a partial list of who's given money for the ballroom project. Some of that is because the White House has released some of the names. There was a dinner honoring some of the donors late last year. So that in itself was a tip off. If people were there, they were donating to the project. And these are companies that are major contractors of the federal government. Palantir, Amazon, and I should note that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns the Washington Post. Google, Lockheed Martin.

16:06I mean, you look down the list of these corporations, and they're all corporations that have something to gain potentially from the federal government. And I've talked with— Well, I want to bring in the fact here that the nonprofit group Public Citizen reports that donors to the ballroom have received new or expanded government contracts worth over$50 billion to date. So what concerns should we have that donors appear to be directly profiting from their contributions to the president's ballroom construction? Jen, that's the exact concern. We don't know what was promised explicitly to these donors.

16:41Would they get special access to the president? Would they get recognized in some way? Would they get more availability from cabinet officials? We do know that it pays to be on the good side of Donald Trump. We've seen that over and over again. When you're on his bad side, you might lose contracts. You might get frozen out in Washington. This is not the way that Washington historically is run, but it is being run that way under President Trump. So these contracts that have been awarded since the ballroom began, are they the same contracts? Do they have extra incentives? We know in some cases the companies that are working on the ballroom, like Clark Construction, also got contracts to do some of the other work that President Trump wants done and do that work at higher rates than might have been expected.

17:24So there is a lot of money going into not just the ballroom project, but all this construction. And it's proceeding quickly, as we've said, and often with very little transparency. And as Jen suggested, that pay-to-play problem is just the contracts, the donations that we know about, not the ones we don't even know about, because many of them are secret. Well, before we take a break, Ed, Washington Post, ABC News, Ipsos poll in April. 56 % of Americans disapprove of the decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House. What input does the public usually get in big federal restoration projects like this?

17:59Well, I mean, first and foremost, all of the projects, which is a common theme for all of them, they need congressional approval. So first and foremost, through their elected representative, being able to vote to approve for these projects. And for all of these projects, none of that has taken place. So whether it's, you know, any of the construction happening in D.C. Congress has not authorized or nor appropriated the money for any of that. But yeah, usually through these commissions, I mean, through the National Park Service, they usually have periods of public input that people can weigh in.

18:28These are our public lands. These are your public lands. And you usually get a voice in the process as well. Well, we have to take a quick break. But before we go, this message from one of you. Anne emails, I was visiting D.C. in mid-May, and my impression of all the construction was that it was to detract from the number of National Guardsmen and women walking around fully armed. I felt like I was in a city under siege. Well, still to come, beautification efforts have been tackled by presidents in the past. We talked to a historian and a cultural preservation expert about the precedent set by previous administrations.

18:59That's just ahead. We'll be right back.

19:05Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with Alon Cohen, who leads research and development at UFC, to discuss the complexity of using technology to analyze fight data. With kick to the head. It makes contact with the outset of my arm, which I brought up. In our world, that's a blocked strike. Yeah. But teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how. Like, when my arm is up, that's a block.

19:47When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not. It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time. That is, until IBM entered the octagon. Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Monarch. Monarch is the personal finance app that brings all your accounts into one place so you can track spending, budgets, investments, debt, and goals in one clear view. Monarch automatically surfaces insights to prevent wasted spending, showcase savings opportunities, and save you time above all else.

20:26Manage money the modern way and get half off your first year of Monarch Core with code VALUE at Monarch.com. Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture podcast starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed. Let's get back into the conversation. We're here with Dan Diamond, White House reporter at The Washington Post, and Ed Sterling, Senior Director of the National Parks Conservation Association.

21:07Let's add a new voice to the conversation now. Rebecca Miller is the Executive Director of the D.C. Preservation League. That's a nonprofit that advocates for the preservation of the District of Columbia's historical buildings and public spaces. Rebecca, welcome. Thank you for having me. But before we turn back to our panel, let's check in with writer and historian Julia Swig. She's the author of four books, including Lady Bird Johnson, Hiding in Plain Sight. Julia, welcome to you. Great to be with you all. Thank you. Julia, your book on Lady Bird Johnson explores the urban renewal renovation work she did in D.C.

21:43as First Lady. We're talking back between 1963 and 1969, and she established a coalition of public and government entities, private citizens, neighborhood groups, coming up with projects to revitalize the District of Columbia. What were the biggest changes made to the city during that time and that process? Well, the beautification phrase that you've used in your show and that Lady Bird and the White House incorporated to was about two things. One was the ornamental beautification, what we see around the National Mall, the cherry blossoms, the azaleas, the bulbs that come up every year in the public spaces that tourists generally see when they come in and out of D.C.

22:28The second part of it really had to do with reframing broader desegregating access to natural parks outside of Northwest Washington, in Southeast, in Southwest, in Northeast. Those are less visible, but longer, much more a part of the Lyndon Johnson social justice agenda around environmentalism and the franchise and even home rule. Lady Bird Johnson utilized community engagement in her beautification work. How did she reach out and work with D.C. residents during her time as First Lady? Right. She, you know, the East Wing at the time under Lady Bird Johnson became a heavy hitting policy shop. And she had young female staff who were environmentalists who had worked at the Department of Interior who were seconded over to work for her, who did kind of, you know, bit by bit granular outreach into the neighborhood.

23:32They had town hall meetings. They went over to Anacostia. They worked with Walter Washington, who became the first appointed and then elected mayor. She was working very much outside of the sort of white Washington, Northwest tourist Washington, working in schools, going to communities. And she did this with, as you said, a coalition of people who were landscape architects, who were activists, who were conservationists, environmentalists. It's very important, by the way, to the people who live here to differentiate white Washington, official Washington, marble Washington from the District of Columbia where people live all over the city.