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Another day, another Trump desecration of DC




President Donald Trump’s appetite to put his gross mark on Washington, D.C.,
simply knows no bounds, and it’s getting exhausting.

You’d think a guy who is dealing with a war he started on a whim and cannot
extricate himself from, a guy who can’t stay awake, a guy presiding over an
ever-deepening affordability crisis, would maybe be a bit too busy to fuss
around with wrecking another D.C. landmark, but boy, would you be wrong.

In the latest assault on history and good taste, Trump is just gonna slap a
little paint on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to see if he likes it.
Trump has decided to paint the historic building, which dates to the 19th
century, white, to match the White House, to the tune of at least $7.5 million.

Sigh. It’s bad enough we are under the thumb of a fascist who sees the
nation’s capital as his personal playhouse to redecorate, but it’s all the
worse because the man has the worst, most basic taste imaginable.

The paint test involves just plopping paint on four 2-by-2 foot panels on the
facade, but Trump isn’t bothering with the sort of expert input or oversight,
because he has “magic paint with silicate.”

Yes, magic paint, which he says is some sort of secret formula that will
strengthen the granite facade and prevent staining.





 

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You will not be surprised to learn that magic paint is not a thing, according
to 25 restoration specialists. “Mineral silicate paints are not suited for use
on granite. These paints do not chemically bond to granite in the manner
necessary to activate their powers to strengthen and protect underlying stone.”

Pffft. What do those pointy-headed fools know? Just look at how well Trump’s
plan to apply a magic seal to the Reflecting Pool went! Oh wait.

Honestly, you know full well if Trump gets to repaint the whole Eisenhower
Building, it will be done on the cheap, yet be extremely costly, and it will be
a mess that a future administration will have to fix.

Preservationists sued to stop this last year, and have been dragged through
the courts by the administration ever since, and are now racing to court for an
emergency injunction, and yeah, you can see why. Here’s Greg Werkheiser,
founding partner at Cultural Heritage Partners, the law firm that sued after
the administration announced this super genius idea last November: “The testing
concerns us because no one outside the White House knows who is conducting the
testing or what protocols they’re following, and qualified preservation experts
have had no chance to weigh in.

The court filing announcing the test is deeply weird, explaining that the
administration “procured the services of a reputable environmental services
contractor (‘Environmental Consultant’) and “conducted market research and
identified a preeminent subject matter expert in civil engineering and applied
sciences (‘Building Consultant’) to create a testing protocol and perform the
testing.”

No, you can’t know who the consultants are, apparently. They live in Canada
and go to a different school. But they both think it’s a terrific idea to slap
some magic paint on and just see what happens.

Like so many other Trump attacks on D.C., this is being done through the
Executive Office of the President, which Trump has decided is a magic thing to
invoke that allows him to build the ballroom, wreck the Eisenhower Building,
you name it, no Congress or historical review needed.

Besides filing cryptic little missives about secret consultants, the
administration is also playing another favorite game in court, which is to
argue that the steps Trump seems to be taking to start one of his construction
projects are not actually proof that they are starting a construction project,
so the construction project can’t be challenged yet.

Trump also announced on Wednesday that he’ll be spending $22.5 billion to
make everyone in D.C’s life miserable by renovating Washington Dulles
International Airport because he thinks it was “incorrectly designed.” Trump
has decided that “some approval” is necessary from Congress for this, but who
can say what he thinks that means.

The lower courts may step in to stop this latest half-assed wrecker shit, but
until Congress or the Supreme Court decides to stop Trump from ignoring every
preservation law and congressional requirement there is, we’re heading for
Reflecting Pool 2.0, Reflecting Pool 3.0, and so on, forevermore.




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