Trump plays mayor at Cabinet meeting, showcasing his DC renovations
[May 28, 2026]
By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE
WASHINGTON (AP) — He boasted of fixing city fountains and power-washing
a local pool — making careful distinctions between sandblasting versus
pebble-blasting — and detailing efforts to repair brick walkways in a
public park.
But this wasn't a small-town mayor assuring a few dozen community
members at a town hall that municipal improvement efforts would be
completed in time for Little League season.
This was President Donald Trump — channeling his decades as a
high-profile real estate developer — regaling his assembled Cabinet and
a nationally televised audience on Wednesday with the ins and outs of
beautification projects around Washington.
“I love construction. It's very exciting,” Trump said, maintaining that
the face-lift he's helped oversee to the nation's capital means “D.C. is
looking beautiful.”
His aside lasted 10 minutes and was far more comprehensive than anything
said about the other major issues discussed during the meeting,
including the war in Iran. There were also only passing references to
gas prices nationwide that have spiked and fears about a weakening
economy that could hurt Trump's Republican Party in its push to retain
control of Congress after November's midterm elections.
He offered new details of his construction plans, suggesting for the
first time that they'd extend to the fountain at the World War II
Memorial.
The president also said that, under his watch, construction crews were
working to improve 28 fountains, then bragged about a push to renovate
the “reflecting lake” or “reflecting pond” — actually the Lincoln
Memorial Reflecting Pool — which he said had been steam-cleaned,
fumigated and coated with “American flag blue” paint.
“Over the years, I built hundreds of pools,” Trump said, recalling his
days as a construction mogul in 1970s and '80s New York. “I always like
to build Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
The president noted that, as part of the revamp, cleaning crews had
removed “more than 10 dumpsters of garbage.”
“Every corner had massive amounts,” he said, before offering, “I guess
that’s the way the tide goes” — even though no tide flows into the pool.
Trump said the idea was to complete the project by Independence Day and
it was mostly on track, except that recent rains in Washington had
presented delays.
But the most detail came when the president turned to power-washing.
Workers “sandblasted it, and then we pebble-blasted,” Trump said,
explaining it as “a bigger version of sand.”
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President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White
House, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn
Martin)
He said that, to guard against leaks, crews were using “a very
sophisticated form of rubber.”
The president also said he'd been responsible for a rebuild of the
park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
“I made a contribution to redoing Lafayette Park. That’s the
entrance to the White House. And it was an embarrassment that floors
were broken,” Trump said, meaning the park's brick walkways.
Through it all, most Cabinet members listened intently with little
emotion, except Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — already known
for conspicuously laughing loudest at such meetings — who nodded
frequently and enthusiastically along this time. Interior Secretary
Doug Burgum also offered comments about some of the renovation
projects when prompted.
Before turning his attention to city improvements, the president
opened the meeting by saying only a few select Cabinet members would
be allowed to speak in hopes of moving things along more quickly.
“Everybody around here has got a lot to say. But we did that once,
and it lasted for like four or five hours. It was a little much,”
Trump said.
That was an exaggeration, though his past Cabinet meetings have
indeed featured lengthy comments — often highly laudatory of Trump —
from top officials. One such meeting last summer pushed the public
portion past the three-hour mark.
In the end, Trump's construction update took up about one-eighth of
an 80-minute meeting. It was up to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to
help get things back on track and steered toward Iran. “I think,
actually, your efforts on the reflecting pool are actually a great
segue,” Hegseth offered.
“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced
monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for
the American people,” the defense secretary said. “And, when you
step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged — war against us
and our people — there’s only one man, over the course of both
presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a
nuclear weapon.”
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