The Tribune

DURING his two terms in office, US President Donald Trump has become known for sometimes reckless adventurism. He has cozied up to infamous tyrants and ruthless rulers such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Vladimir Putin in Russia. He has kidnapped a dictatorial sitting chief of state in Venezuela, initiated a deadly war with murderous theocrats in Iran, and relentlessly squeezed the stubborn Communist regime in Cuba.

In the process, he has precipitated an economic crisis that may yet nullify many of the strong gains achieved in the American stock market over the past decade or so.

At the same time, he has attacked and eviscerated the American federal government in Washington DC; spearheaded what some feel is a discriminatory effort to retract voting rights for Americans of color; seized and maintained absolute control of one of the two major American political parties; reportedly enriched himself and his family by sums reaching at least $2 billion according to the latest accounts this week, and has generally treated the US Supreme Court as a friendly means of redress for multiple offenses against him, real and imaginary, mostly during the four-year interregnum between his two terms.

This president has normalized graft and corruption at unprecedented and previously unimaginable levels. He has aggravated and deeply antagonized allies whose support the US has enjoyed for 70 years.

Trump has remained steadfastly loyal to one institution, however. That is golf. We’ll get back to that shortly.

After his first term, many of Trump’s initiatives were reversed under his successor Joe Biden. But the millions of Americans and hundreds of pundits and commentators badly miscalculated when they figured that the 2020 election would rid the US of Donald Trump forever, and Trump returned to office shorn of any sense of obligation to propriety or custom.

It seems likely that while many of Trump’s initiatives will be undone or outlawed once he is gone, some changes will properly survive.

During this second presidential term, Trump has behaved outlandishly. He has also routinely disregarded lack of their qualifications in his determination to prioritize personal loyalty to him in selecting almost all of his cabinet members, agency heads, and key staffers.

The only important exceptions, to be fair, appear to be Trump’s choices for Secretary of the Treasury (Wall Streeter Scott Bessent) and Secretary of State (Florida senator Marco Rubio).

Quickly winning US Senate approval in January 2025, Bessent became the first openly gay person to lead the US Treasury Department, the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet member in a Republican administration, and the second openly gay Senate-confirmed cabinet secretary. While the Treasury Secretary has often repeated dubious claims made by Trump and otherwise played the required role of loyal sycophant, Bessent has largely avoided controversy and navigated the mayhem in Washington so far.

Rubio has also successfully survived numerous crises as he has strangled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and stripped the State Department of numerous budgetary, staffing, and programmatic assets. But, now for many months also serving as National Security Adviser, Rubio is winning grudging respect from this administration’s many critics. Despite constantly being thrown into a hypothetical struggle with Vice President JD Vance over who would run in 2028 to succeed Trump, Rubio has maintained his position.

While all of this has been going on, the president has found the time to try to rebuild Washington DC according to his own whims, perhaps to ensure that it remains a dramatic symbol of and testament to his tenure. He has repainted the 2,000-foot-long reflecting pool to the east of the Lincoln Memorial, torn down and partially rebuilt the entire east wing of the White House, seized for a while complete control of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, proposed to construct a massive ceremonial triumphal arch at the Virginia end of the Memorial Bridge, and taken over the nearby US Institute of Peace.

This is not to say that some form of reconstruction was not necessary for most of these iconic structures, mind you. They have all suffered from prolonged neglect. But the scale of the proposed alterations and their skyrocketing costs have attracted much attention and criticism, even from loyal Republicans.

Trump has now focused his attention on a spectacularly situated public golf course.  Accompanied by the Secretary of the Interior whose National Park Service operates this course at East Potomac Park, the president visited the layout on Sunday. And a long-simmering dispute with residents of the capital burst into bitter controversy for the third time this year.

Some golf course context may be helpful here, especially since the East Potomac Park course controversy neatly combines Trump’s passion for – and expertise about – golf course development and management on one hand, and his narcissistic obsession to leave behind memorials to his presidential tenure.

Some of the world’s greatest golf courses are distinguished by particular features. There are the prairie-like rolling fairways and the deep pocket bunkers at Royal St. Andrews in Scotland, for example. There is Amen Corner at the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia, with its picturesque bridge and quietly menacing stream. There are the spectacular seaside cliff and rolling surf backdrops at several holes along the track of Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula near San Francisco. There is the island hole at the comparatively new Tournament Players Club championship course just outside Jacksonville in Florida.

These are all world-famous golf courses with exclusive membership rolls and massive fees for outsiders who want the thrill of playing them. These range from up to $900 for TPC Sawgrass to $695 at Pebble Beach to $430 at St. Andrews – all depending on which of several courses you play and what time of the year. At Augusta National, you could pay $500 for a round if you secure an invitation from one of the members.

But in Washington DC, any of us may still, today, play 18 holes for around $40 at East Potomac Park golf course, which has been managed by the National Park Service for many years. The course is located downtown in Washington, on a long, narrow spit of land that divides the broad, tidal Potomac River and National Airport on one side, from the narrow channel that separates the park from the tributary Anacostia River and the dramatic new condo, restaurant, and entertainment district in Southwest Washington. 

From the fifth tee, it’s possible to line up a tee shot with the Washington Monument--the American capital city’s great obelisk--not more than a mile away to the northwest. The golf course complex at East Potomac Park has been a public course for 105 years. It was originally constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers and its first holes were finished not long after the end of the First World War.

The three courses on the property are all flat, as befits their riverbed location, and there is no water and not too much sand on the courses. But they have for generations served the national capital area, and particularly its lower-paid civil servant class of government workers, as a kind of haven from all the pressure and commotion of a major downtown district.

But this pleasant public course surrounded on both sides by water and spectacular vistas offers challenges of distance and landscaping that require good shot making.

East Potomac Park, though, now finds itself in the crosshairs of US president Donald Trump’s relentless effort to remake the capital city in his own image. Trump, one of whose signature golf courses is located 25 miles west of the city in Virginia, also along the Potomac, has designs to close this public course and remake it into a spectacular, and significantly more expensive, place to play his favorite game.

The local community is up in arms. Thousands of fishermen cast from the current golf course’s edge, and in warm weather the whole area is crowded with happy picnicking families.  Local bicycle clubs regularly stage races around the course’s perimeter. It’s a peerless community asset.

Numerous lawsuits have sought to frustrate Trump’s plans. The hope is to somehow delay his redevelopment until he gets distracted or leaves office. But tons of dirt from the East Wing project are already being delivered to the East Potomac Park site. A bet on resistance might not be wise.