President Donald Trump boasted he knows “more about grass than any human being” during a photo op with National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., as he talked about beautifying the nation’s capital city.
Trump went to the U.S. Park Police facility in Anacostia Thursday evening to thank local and federal law enforcement for their efforts in what the president called “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.”
Last week, the president announced he had placed D.C. police under direct federal control and deployed about 800 National Guard troops to the city, despite crime declining in recent years.
According to the Trump administration’s count, in the past two weeks, at least 465 arrests have been made since the start of the president’s federal takeover, which has been criticized as “unprecedented” and “authoritarian” by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
During his address to roughly 300 men and women from the Metropolitan Police Department, National Guard, Homeland Security Investigations and other federal agencies, Trump said he plans on renovating D.C. parks, and then went into a bizarre spiel about how he’s “very good at grass.”
“ I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world. And we’re gonna be regrassing all of your parks, all brand new sprinkler systems, the best that you can buy,” Trump said.
He then went on to say the grass in D.C.’s parks will look just like the grass in Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters Tournament is held.
“It’ll look like Augusta. It’ll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club. That’s even better,” Trump said. “We’re gonna have all brand new, beautiful grass.”
“You know, like everything else, grass has a life. Do you know that?…And, the grass here died about 40 years ago. So we’re gonna be rebuilding all of your parks, and it’s gonna happen fast,” the president continued.
Trump then told the crowd, “So you do the job on safety, and I’ll get this place fixed up physically, and we’re gonna be so proud of it at the end of six months, but let’s say at the end of a year, this place will be maxed out in terms of beauty.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro were also at Thursday’s photo op. Pizzas were provided from a local restaurant and burgers cooked at the White House were supplied for law enforcement.
D.C.’s parks aren’t the only places Trump is trying to beautify. He put in a new patio in the White House Rose Garden, complete with umbrellas shipped from Mar-a-Lago and new speakers.
Trump also talked Thursday evening about his plans to build a new ballroom in the White House, saying, “ They’ve been after a ballroom for 150 years, but they never had a real estate guy as a president.”
