President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0showed off his new White House\u00a0helicopter landing pad\u00a0on Monday, attempting to brush aside a\u00a0First Amendment firestorm\u00a0even as major television networks kept their cameras away in protest of CNN being banned from the grounds.<\/p>\n
\n
A light drizzle fell on the South Lawn as Trump used oversized gold scissors to cut a red, white and blue ribbon. He then exchanged handshakes with officials and with some members of a construction crew wearing green smocks and hardhats \u2014 seeking to portray business as usual.<\/p>\n
If he had words to mark the occasion, however, it was impossible to hear them over the noise of his waiting helicopter. Normally, TV network crews work to capture clearer audio.<\/p>\n
Trump also didn\u2019t answer reporters\u2019 shouted questions before climbing aboard Marine One for an eventual flight to New York. Instead, he wrote on his social media site, \u201cWe are just leaving the White House Lawn on the maiden voyage from the newly built, and very beautiful, Heliport!\u201d<\/p>\n
MS Now, Politico and CNN have sued after\u00a0Trump announced Friday\u00a0that he was banning them from covering the White House in a clear escalation of Trump\u2019s long-running efforts \u2014 in the courts and through administrative action \u2014 to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable.<\/p>\n
CNN normally participates in a five-network rotation that provides pooled footage of daily events at the White House. When the network was barred from taking its assigned turn on Monday, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News agreed collectively to the extraordinary step of skipping Trump\u2019s helipad ceremony.<\/p>\n
Trump has long crowed about how the new helipad \u2014 featuring extensive granite that he boasts will have a \u201cmillion-year life,\u201d as well as a large insignia reading the \u201cSeal of the President of the United States\u201d \u2014 would\u00a0impress Chinese President Xi Jinping, who arrives Wednesday for a\u00a0state visit.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been focused on wowing Xi even as he decried Democrats as communists in an attempt to help Republicans retain control of Congress in upcoming\u00a0midterm elections.\u00a0But his effort to curb access for media outlets to the White House has overshadowed Trump\u2019s pet building projects and Xi\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
Igniting constitutional questions over media access also eclipsed the reason Trump was lifting off from the helipad \u2014 the annual trip to attend the\u00a0United Nations General Assembly\u00a0beginning on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The president has spent large swaths of his second term\u00a0focused on building projects\u00a0even as his administration struggles to find a way out of the ongoing\u00a0war in Iran. Trump\u2019s\u00a0approval ratings have sunk\u00a0with only about six weeks before Election Day, where voters are increasingly worried about inflation and a potentially\u00a0weakening economy.<\/p>\n
Whether Trump\u2019s work will be long-lasting is unclear<\/h4>\n
Trump has made grand claims about the granite\u2019s longevity. He earlier suggested that his refurbishing of the\u00a0Lincoln Memorial\u2019s Reflecting Poolwould last a century \u2014 only for the\u00a0paint to fade\u00a0and its liner to peel away in chunks just days after it was laid.<\/p>\n
The helipad work began in June. Trump also ripped out the original Tennessee flagstone along the West Wing\u2019s colonnade and replaced it with black granite. He similarly refurbished the traditional walkway from the White House\u2019s diplomatic entrance with white granite, along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn.<\/p>\n
Trump rushed to finish the project before Xi arrives and has argued that visiting dignitaries will be dazzled by the project \u2014 despite Marine One being the only aircraft that lands so close to the White House.<\/p>\n
The president says the improvement was required since Vietnam War-era choppers that long had been used as Marine One are being replaced by modern ones that are too powerful to land on the White House lawn without\u00a0damaging the lawn\u2019s grass. Trump has spent months repeatedly\u00a0talking about grass\u00a0as a way to promote his various building plans, even though many of the construction projects required ripping up turf.<\/p>\n
Trump said in July that the helipad project would be privately funded and\u00a0estimated its cost at up to $6 million. Additional changes, including extensive efforts to level the ground around the helipad, have made calculating the exact expenditure difficult.<\/p>\n
Trump relishes the role of builder-in-chief<\/h4>\n
The once storied South Lawn has become a major construction site this year. In June, Trump erected a fighting cage and temporary arena for a\u00a0UFC fight marking his 80th birthday. Then, crews got down to work on the helipad.<\/p>\n
Trump says Sikorsky Aircraft \u2014 a subsidiary of defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin \u2014 would be paying for the helipad, since the company made the newer, larger helicopters. In his online post, Trump thanked Lockheed Martin\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n
Some of Trump\u2019s projects have relied on public money, even when the president initially suggested otherwise.<\/p>\n
When crews originally demolished the White House\u2019s East Wing to make room for Trump\u2019s\u00a0$400 million ballroom, the president said it would be paid for by private donors. But his administration later sought\u00a0$1 billionfrom Congress to make security improvements to the structure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Trump #speaks #crews #arent #sound #Networks #stay #CNN #ban<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0showed … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[587,1767,5051,5419,610,392,8104,1234,1898,357],"class_list":["post-5027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-arent","tag-ban","tag-cnn","tag-crews","tag-media","tag-networks","tag-sound","tag-speaks","tag-stay","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n