Inside Trump’s Mad Dash to Renovate Washington
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I'm Winna Liu. I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times games. And I love horror movies. I love my dog. And I love trying to trick you.
I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. The fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem. New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com slash games to start playing today.
Do you have a minute? We make a podcast called The Daily. Sure. We're in town looking at all of the renovations and construction work that the president's undertaken. The reflecting pool, Lafayette Park, and the arch that's going to be built behind us. And we're just trying to figure out what people are thinking about it.
I think it's a mess. I'm really disappointed because we're here for my granddaughter's 16th birthday. She wanted to come to D.C., see all the stuff, and I really thought that pool would be finished. I'm very sad that this year our trip, they're renovating the pool because all the other years before, they saw very nice views from the pool.
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.
What do you think about the reflecting pool?
This is The Daily. In the lead-up to America's 250th birthday this summer, President Trump is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive renovation of the nation's capital. I think it's good. I mean, they're fixing it up, making it look pretty. I mean, this is Washington, D.C. Everyone's going to come here. And depending on where you sit, these projects are either boldly slicing through bureaucratic red tape to bring Washington back to its glory. Love him. I'm 100% behind him. He's making this wonderful D.C. look greatly beautiful again. All right, tell us about the arch. The arch. 100% behind the arch as well.
Or... I think when things are done, why change them and then change them again? It was made that way for a reason, wasn't it?
They are blowing through every single rule and regulation designed to protect taxpayer dollars and safeguard the historical integrity of the city.
I personally don't like any of it. I believe it's all about his ego and not about our country. And so for me, that doesn't work.
So today, we're taking a walking tour of the sites that Trump is remaking with our colleague David Farenthold, who has been investigating exactly how these projects have come together and what they will mean for the country's most iconic public spaces. It's Monday, June 1st.
Hey. Hello, David. What's going on, man? Pleasure. Our tour guide has arrived. Welcome to DC. Thank you so much. Thank you for being our tour guide today. So our plan, if you sign on to it, is for you to take us to the biggest construction sites across the mall. We're going to start where we're standing in front of Lafayette Park in downtown Washington, DC. literally a stone's throw from the White House. Then we're gonna go to the reflecting pool, and we're gonna end with the arch, but, Your reporting, as best I can tell on all this, starts right here in Lafayette Park. That's right. So just tell us that story.
So I cover government contracts. I write about how the government spends its money and the way that it chooses the people it pays. President Trump, in his second term, has been obsessed and very ambitious about changing Washington, renovating, repairing. improving the physical surroundings of downtown Washington, the place where he works. And those projects are happening all over, and I was really interested in seeing how those projects came together. What were those contracts like? Who was getting paid? How were they getting paid? And how did they get selected? And my curiosity led me to this one particularly, the renovation of Lafayette Park, particularly because of what I found in government contracting records, or more precisely, what I didn't find.
The contract to fix this park is secret. It doesn't exist in any of the public databases of government spending.
That's unusual.
Yes, very unusual for something like this.
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