Donald Trump’s vanity projects expose something deeper

Early this morning, dressed entirely in black except for a pair of crisp white golf shoes, the President of the United States walked slowly through the rain to tour his latest construction project: a public golf course. Standing between him and the cameras during this presidential “executive” time was a member of his heavily armed security detail, watching over as the president reviewed architectural renderings, discussed renovations, and oversaw yet another taxpayer-funded vanity project.

From there, his grand tour of Washington, D.C., continued from one renovation project to the next. After inspecting plans at East Potomac Golf Links, his motorcade eventually made a stop at nearby Lafayette Square, where reports say that he personally inspected trees and made demands to have exactly 47 of his favorite maple trees planted to commemorate himself.

In ordinary times, a president planting trees or restoring public spaces would have been something worth celebrating. But Donald J. Trump isn’t preserving our nation’s capital. He is reshaping it in his own image, ensuring that Washington reflects not the history of the United States, but the carefully curated version of history he wants future generations to remember about him.

Since taking office, the president has demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for a $600 million ballroom funded in part by corporations seeking his favor. He paved over the Rose Garden. He repainted the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a complete disaster, which he is still trying to recover from. He put his own name on the facade of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a building that Congress named for President John F. Kennedy, until a federal judge ordered the letters physically removed from the marble. He has announced plans for a 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. And now, 47 maple trees in a public park, because he is the 47th president and because maple trees are his favorite. Not America’s trees. His trees.

The Lafayette Square project, like nearly every renovation Trump has touched in Washington, bypassed federal review panels entirely. The administration never publicly posted contracting documents. Trump has claimed he made a multimillion-dollar personal contribution to the renovations but has provided no evidence. The same contractor building his White House ballroom, Clark Construction, was awarded a sole-source $17.4 million contract to restore two fountains in the park, work the Biden administration had previously estimated would cost $3.3 million. The National Park Service justified skipping the competitive bidding process by invoking a rarely used “urgency” exemption, a provision typically reserved for wars and natural disasters, because they said the fountains needed to be ready for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration. Senator Richard Blumenthal has opened a formal investigation into whether excess taxpayer dollars are being funneled to Clark Construction as a reward for its role in building the president’s ballroom. None of this has stopped the president from moving forward.

After his stop at Lafayette Square this morning, Trump posted an extremely long rant on Truth Social in which he praised himself for restoring 73 statues, monuments, and fountains, blamed “Criminal, Radical Left Vandals” again for the algae problems plaguing his Reflecting Pool, and announced that renowned golf course architect Tom Fazio would completely redesign East Potomac Golf Links, with work beginning September 1. He claimed the redesigned course would host the U.S. Open, the Ryder Cup, and the PGA Championship. He did not mention who would pay for it. He also did not mention that a federal judge had already warned of “serious consequences” if the administration begins major work on the course without court approval.

This is why all of this matters. On the surface, these stories sound almost ridiculous. A golf course. A ballroom. A reflecting pool. Forty-seven maple trees. But together they tell us something much bigger. The physical spaces of a nation’s capital are not just landscaping projects. They are symbols. They tell future generations who we were, what we valued, and whose legacy deserves to be remembered.

Throughout history, leaders with authoritarian ambitions have understood that shaping memory can be just as powerful as shaping policy. Monuments are built. Buildings are renamed. Grand construction projects become reflections of one man’s ego rather than a nation’s shared identity. The goal isn’t simply to leave behind beautiful architecture. It’s to blur the line between the country and the ruler until future generations begin to associate one man with the nation itself.

That’s why the golf course matters. That’s why the ballroom and the triumphal arch matter. That’s why forty-seven maple trees matter. Standing alone, each project may seem trivial. Together, they reveal the depth of what he is doing and what he plans to do.

When I finally put my phone down this afternoon, I couldn’t stop thinking about the contrast. Here was the President of the United States spending his day inspecting golf courses, counting maple trees, redesigning monuments, and posting about algae, while wars were escalating overseas, American troops have spent months away from home, and families across this country are facing increasing economic uncertainty.

I just keep thinking about how nothing he does has helped a single everyday American and how we are all in for increasingly volatile and dangerous times. While at the same time, everything feels relatively normal for the most part, at least here in Southern California. And that’s when I really started to feel the weight of how serious this all is.

I could hear kids laughing and see neighbors out walking their dogs. Looking out my kitchen window, there was nothing to suggest that the country was in crisis. That feeling of normalcy is exactly what frightened me.

As I made dinner tonight, I was still thinking about it all, and especially about the families who are not having a normal Sunday tonight. I was thinking about the families separated in immigration holding cells. Of the children scared without their parents. About the moms and dads, heartbroken to be away from their children in truly despicable conditions. And for the people who have lived here for years, who have built lives and raised children and paid taxes and contributed to their communities, who are staring at the walls of their homes trying to figure out whether they are about to lose everything. Whether they will be deported back to a country where they face immediate death or torture, or sent to a third country they have never been to, or separated from children who were born here as American citizens. They are not making plans for the summer. They are making plans for survival. They are trying to decide whether to leave their children behind so that those children can stay in the only country they have ever known. They are thinking through things that are truly unimaginable to most of us, because of the decision of Trump’s captured Supreme Court.

I think a lot about the early days of some of the worst atrocities our world has ever seen. When ordinary citizens went about their lives, their neighbors were rounded up. Maybe they did not fully understand the extent of what was happening at first, but they were starting to. They still had their voices, and they did not use them, for whatever reason, whether it was fear or denial or the simple comfort of pretending that their own normalcy meant the world was still functioning the way it was supposed to. And by the time enough of them understood, it was too late. If they had all stood up, if they had all spoken at once, it could have been stopped. That is the lesson that I carry with me every single day, the one that I think about when I am standing in my kitchen on a Sunday night feeling the pull of normalcy while my phone fills with horrors. We are not at the end of this story. We are still in the part where it can be stopped. But only if people use their voices, all of them, right now.

Former President Joe Biden used his last night. Speaking at the Maryland Democratic Party’s “Fight Back and Win Gala” on Saturday evening, exactly two years to the day after the presidential debate that ended his reelection campaign, Biden delivered what may have been his sharpest public attack on Trump since leaving office. He called out the vanity projects by name, listing the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, the triumphal arch, and the Reflecting Pool before landing on a single word: “What a loser.” He said the Reflecting Pool “reflects something even worse than the narcissism and incompetence at the core of this administration,” calling it “the corruption, the corruption, the brazen, blatant corruption. Corruption on a scale never seen before in American history in any administration.” And he turned to January 6, saying: “What makes me angry is that Trump wants to give taxpayers’ money, your money, to the January 6th insurrectionists. These people don’t deserve to be compensated. They deserve to be put in jail for a long, long, long time.” He told the crowd to get up. “It’s time to get up, dammit. Get up. Get up, now.”

This is the message we need from all Americans who care about our country. Biden might not be the messenger that every American wants to hear from right now, but what he did on that stage matters, because he did it. He showed up. He named the corruption. He called it what it is. And that is what every single person needs to be doing right now. The most surefire way that we save this country from Trump’s corruption and authoritarian takeover is if everybody speaks out. Celebrities. Politicians. Business owners. Teachers. Coaches. Parents. Every single person who has even one other person who listens to them needs to be taking a side and a stand right this minute. Not next month. Not closer to the midterms. Now. Because the people who are being targeted by this administration do not have the luxury of waiting, and the normalcy that the rest of us feel on a Sunday night is not a sign that things are okay. It is the most dangerous illusion there is.

Donald Trump thinks he owns this country. He thinks that any public building, public park, or any piece of land that belongs to the American people is his to rename, redesign, and remake in his image. He sees himself as a king running a family company, with Congress as middle management and the American public as tenants who should be grateful for the renovations. He is planting 47 trees to honor himself while 350,000 Haitians wonder if they will be sent back to a country controlled by gangs. He is redesigning a golf course while American troops sit under missile threats. He is posting about algae while children are being separated from their parents. That is who he is. That is what he is doing with the power of the presidency. And the only thing standing between him and the complete transformation of this country into something unrecognizable is us. All of us. Together. Using our voices while we still can.

The midterms are 128 days away. Every House seat and a third of the Senate are on the ballot. Winning at the midterms is how we begin to claw back accountability, oversight, and the basic expectation that the President of the United States should be managing a war and protecting vulnerable people instead of counting maple trees in the rain. But the work between now and then is not just about voting. It is about making sure that every person you know understands what is actually happening, because the gap between what this country looks like on a quiet Sunday evening and what is actually being done in our name is the gap that authoritarians rely on. They count on normalcy and silence. They count on the fact that most people will look out their window, see their neighbors walking their dogs, and assume that everything is fine. It is not fine. But it is not over, and we still have time to turn this country around. That is why I still have hope for America, and you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: Yesterday I shared that I was finally able to find and buy Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and then I woke up to this social media share from the president. It was my first image of the day, a screenshot at that. I see this as a sign for what we need to do right now. It looks like the first print run is already sold out, so if you can't find it locally pre order it today. What better way to send Trump a message than to make the book he clearly is worried about an even bigger bestseller.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/28/trump-wants-47-trees-mark-his-47th-presidency-white-house-park/
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-work-begin-dc-golf-despite-judges-warning/story?id=134293591
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-unleashes-deranged-594-word-rant-on-his-tour-of-dc/
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/23/nx-s1-5509554/rose-garden-paved
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/design-plan-for-trumps-proposed-washington-arch-is-approved-by-trump-appointed-commission
https://www.enr.com/articles/62895-white-house-ballroom-contractor-wins-174m-sole-source-park-contract
https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-questions-massive-no-bid-contract-awarded-to-trumps-ballroom-construction-firm
https://abcnews.com/US/judge-warns-consequences-administration-begins-work-east-potomac/story?id=132639390
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/25/politics/live-news/supreme-court-issues-opinions
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tps-holders-fear-deportation-targets-supreme-court-ruling-rcna351951
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/24/nx-s1-5869125/court-allows-trump-speedy-deportations
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/28/politics/joe-biden-democrats-speech
https://marylandmatters.org/2026/06/28/biden-rallies-democrats-slams-trump-at-maryland-democratic-party-gala/
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5944869-us-iran-stand-down-talks/
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/28/trump-threatens-iran-with-annihilation-kuwait-bahrain-report-attacks.html