With 15 days until the midterm elections, and more than 9.5 million ballots already cast, the president of the United States used the social media platform he owns to announce that the U.S. Department of the Interior had “developed a plan to build a World Class Championship Golf Course on the site of the current East Potomac Golf Links, located in Washington, D.C. When completed, it will be open to the Public while, at the same time, designed to the Highest Level of Golf and able to hold World Class Tournaments such as the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, and the Presidents Cup.”
This morning the president added that East Potomac Golf Links are currently “a terrible and very unsafe golf course,” and that the proposed plan will “make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course.” The president did not elaborate on what makes the course “very unsafe,” but it is likely the consequence of the demolition of the East Wing of the White House:
Debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing that was dumped at a nearby public golf course tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, the National Park Service said.
An interim report by a Virginia engineering firm says the toxic metals, along with PCBs, pesticides, petroleum byproducts and other chemicals were detected at levels above laboratory reporting limits in soil at the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic golf course that President Donald Trump plans to renovate.
The park service began dumping debris from the East Wing onto the golf course in October, and more than 30,000 cubic yards (810,000 cubic feet) of excavated soil had been transported to the site as of last month, the report by Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said. The park service requested the report.
Or perhaps the president heard that the course has hazards.
Now, maybe you love golf, or maybe you don’t; maybe you love the idea of redesigning the East Potomac Golf Links, maybe you don’t. But it ranks very, very low on the list of priorities of the American electorate. President Trump has run into trouble on a lot of fronts in his second term, but one glaring problem is that Trump spends a lot of time and energy on projects that interest him, and that do not interest the American people.