Donald Trump wants a bigger, more beautiful golf course.Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s plans to remake parts of Washington, DC, are much bigger—and more expensive—than originally planned. A top Trump fundraiser is now asking for donations to a nonprofit that will support a proposed massive sculpture garden, as well as the remodeling of a central DC golf course.
Last year, dump trucks carrying demolition waste and dirt started depositing their payloads in a giant pile near the 4th hole at DC’s municipal East Potomac Golf Course. It was the first sign that Trump planned to re-create the course to his own tastes. (Later, reporters learned that the debris was the remains of the White House’s old East Wing.)
Today, the Washington Post reported that Trump fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke is soliciting donations to remake the course into a championship-caliber facility for major events and to create Trump’s long-desired “Garden of American Heroes,” a sculpture park on nearby federal land. The federal government plans to formally take over the golf course Sunday, according to the Post.
The concept images for the golf course seem to eliminate most non-golf activities that presently exist in East Potomac, disappearing the park’s bike paths and open spaces where people picnic in the summers.
The garden, meanwhile, is a Trump concept that’s been in the works since his first term. It would involve approximately 250 “realistic” statues of prominent Americans, including Elvis Presley, Kobe Bryant, Alfred Hitchcock, and Dr. Seuss, among many others, according to the New York Times. The statues alone could cost more than $50 million, though Congress has only approved $40 million for for the project.
It’s the latest in a chain of attempts to remake DC in Trump’s image: the renaming of the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” the draping of banners bearing his portrait over various federal government buildings, and resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in “American flag blue.” He also hopes to add a giant triumphal arch to the Lincoln Memorial area, which would overshadow the memorial itself.
The president, it’s clear, loves a monument: Yesterday, he posted a picture online of his own face photoshopped onto Mount Rushmore.
