By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE
WASHINGTON (AP) — With Nationwide Guard troops within the streets and federal brokers on the door of his former adviser, President Donald Trump spent a heavy dose of his Friday channeling his inside vacationer and reliving his bygone days as a sports activities workforce proprietor and building mogul.
He stopped by a present store close to the White Home, visited the Kennedy Heart that he now chairs and returned to his more and more gilded Oval Workplace to trumpet the U.S. cohosting subsequent 12 months’s World Cup.
“We now have loads of enjoyable,” Trump mentioned. “We’re fixing up the entire world.”
The president’s stops across the metropolis got here because the nation’s capital is more and more on edge amid Trump’s deployment of the Nationwide Guard and federalization of Washington’s police power in an effort to raised curb crime.
Simply earlier than he left the White Home, officers introduced there had been 76 arrests citywide the earlier night as a part of the crackdown. The Pentagon additionally mentioned Nationwide Guard troops patrolling the streets of D.C. would quickly begin carrying weapons.
“We’re going to make D.C. completely secure. When individuals come from Iowa, Indiana, all the lovely locations, and so they come, they’re not going to go dwelling in a physique bag,” Trump mentioned after visiting the Folks’s Home exhibit and its reward store. “They’re not going dwelling in a coffin, and it’s very secure proper now.”
With the crackdown now getting into its third week, nevertheless, many Washington residents and guests don’t really feel as secure because the president suggests, with persisting issues that the White Home is amplifying racist narratives about city crime and tearing down homeless camps the place essentially the most susceptible dwell.
Trump has shrugged off criticisms and declared, when requested in regards to the FBI looking out the house and workplace of his former nationwide safety adviser John Bolton, “I’m really the chief regulation enforcement officer.” Nonetheless, he spent way more time wanting and performing like a president relishing the elements of the job that make him happiest.
On the Kennedy Heart, Trump’s actions Friday weren’t public, however he instructed reporters he’d exhibit the marble that could be used to refurbish the constructing — together with different deliberate renovations, together with change the paint on its signature columns from gold to white.
Trump has begun often joking about renaming it the Trump Kennedy Heart however deadpanned Friday: “We’re not ready to do this fairly but. Perhaps in per week or so.”
The president additionally mentioned he’ll be main but extra White Home renovations — this time on the toilet connected to the long-lasting Lincoln Bed room. It final underwent renovations in 2005.
“We’ll be doing the Lincoln Toilet which was Artwork Deco,” Trump mentioned, including, “We’re making it really unbelievable.”
The president even floated the thought of refurbishing the sprawling Outdated Government Workplace Constructing on the White Home grounds, saying it was “such a phenomenal constructing, but it surely doesn’t look it.”
Trump has already made in depth adjustments to the White Home, redoing the Oval Workplace so as to add gold decor, putting in patio seating with exterior audio system across the Rose Backyard, erecting two towering flagpoles on its garden and promising to construct a ballroom.
Later within the day, Trump was joined within the Oval Workplace by FIFA President Gianni Infantino to announce that the Kennedy Heart would host the draw for the 2026 World Cup, which will probably be performed within the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
The previous proprietor of the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, Trump has been closely selling sporting occasions that may happen throughout his second time period, together with the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“I simply left the Kennedy Heart. We’re spending some huge cash correctly and making it actually lovely,” Trump mentioned throughout the occasion with Infantino. “It’s going to be lovely once more. It’s like Washington, D.C.”
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