President Donald Trump said his planned renovation of a Washington, D.C., golf complex would transform “Trash Island” into an “Island of Beauty.”
The Republican president made the remarks in a flurry of late-night Truth Social posts about East Potomac Golf Links, a public, golf facility a few miles south of the White House.
The site is at the center of an ongoing legal battle between the administration, which wants to replace its three golf courses with a single championship-style course, and a preservation group, which argues the president’s plans threaten its future as an affordable place for the public to play.
“‘Trash Island,’ Washington, D.C., the nickname for the broken and dilapidated Golf Course that is the subject of frivolous litigation in the United States Court System, before a judge that seems not to want Greatness for our Capital or our Nation (but who knows?), has been badly managed for so many decades that it is a completely nonviable and unsafe Project,” Trump wrote on Monday evening.
“Our Plan, developed to the Highest Levels and Standards of Golf, will turn Trash Island into an Island of Beauty and Success,” he said, adding that the public is “anxiously waiting for something that is really special!”
The 80-year-old president subsequently posted over a dozen photos taken at the complex, which he said were for “the judge to study.” He was referring to U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who he labeled a “lunatic” after she ordered that construction work be temporarily halted.
The images depicted broken fences, trucks and dumpsters full of debris, a pile of wooden pallets and flooded walkways.
The posts mark the latest development in a long-running legal standoff over the complex, which first opened in 1921 on a strip of land between the Potomac River and the Washington Channel.
In February, two golfers and a non-profit preservation group filed a lawsuit alleging Trump’s planned reconstruction project violated a congressional act that stated the land should be “forever held and used as a park for the recreation and pleasure of the people” and that it violated environmental laws.
The suit came after the administration canceled a 50-year lease held by the National Links Trust to manage the courses.
In May, Judge Ana Reyes ordered the administration to provide advance notice before undertaking substantial construction or removing upwards of 10 trees.
Then on October 9, officials notified the court of plans to take down “up to 529 trees.” Soon after, hundreds of trees had been removed from the facility.
During an emergency hearing last week, the judge chastised government attorneys for not providing sufficient notice, stating that she was “beyond disappointed” by the swift removal of so many trees. Reyes then ordered a temporary pause.
On Saturday, a Department of Justice official filed a motion to boot Reyes from the case over what he described as her “egregious” behavior. She called the recusal motion “baseless” and remains on the case.
Trump announced on Sunday that the renovation would begin on November 15, with the courses closing for about 15 months. On Monday, Trump said the work would begin “immediately.”
“The United States Department of Interior wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course,” the president wrote on Truth Social Monday. “They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that! The judge on the case is a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane?”
“Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY,” he added.
His post came just ahead of a new hearing on the matter, during which Reyes asked government officials who had signed off on the tree removal and other plans for the facility. “There is no universe in which all of this just coincidentally happened at the same time. There just isn’t,” she said.
At the close of the seven-hour hearing, the judge said that she had received death threats over the case, adding: “I really don’t think that’s what the founders envisioned.”
Trump, an avid golfer who owns courses around the world, has spent 21 percent of the days in his second term on the golf course, according to an online tracker.
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