President Donald Trump used Truth Social on Sunday morning to thank golf course designer Tom Fazio for his work on a planned course at East Potomac Park in Washington, DC.
“Doug Burgum, and the United States Department of the Interior, is very excited about the new Development of a Great Golf Course at the site of the old East Potomac Golf Links. We would like to thank Tom Fazio for his initial conceptual design and ideas, coupled with those of others from within the Golf World and the Department of the Interior,” the president wrote.
He continued: “Any variance or changes will be made, depending on site conditions, by the Experts in Parks and Recreation, whose experience and knowledge in Seawalls, Landscaping, and Design are second to none.”
The post arrived after a weekend of online debate over two photographs taken in the Oval Office. It remains unclear whether Trump’s announcement had any connection to that attention.
Katie Zacharia, who served five days as White House press secretary, posted the first photo on Friday. It shows her standing beside Trump, who sits at his desk. A blurred map rests on the desktop.
Zacharia started the job on Monday.
The White House asked her to resign Friday, following a shaky first press briefing and reports that she never passed the bar exam even though she had described herself as an attorney.
Her second post came Saturday and pictured Zacharia and her family with the president. In that image, the map no longer appears on the desk.
Viewers noticed the difference. Some said the landmass on the map resembles East Potomac Park.
Save East Po, a group that opposes the renovation, retweeted the Friday photo.
“FYI to anyone paying attention – that blurred out map on the PRESIDENT’S DESK is East Potomac Park,” the group wrote.
Its next tweet featured the Saturday photo.
“Nothing says “we have no plan” like a photo of plan-shaped map on the President’s desk, followed by a second photo where that map has been digitally removed,” the group wrote.
Alex Rosen, who founded Save East Po, told The Washington Post that details on the blurred map resemble renovation renderings that circulated earlier.
Opponents of the project read the map as a sign Trump intends to move ahead despite the court challenge.
The White House rejected that reading.
Communications Director Steven Cheung accused the Daily Mail of “breathlessly obsessing over an innocuous photo” and of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Zacharia also responded to the Daily Mail.
“It is only fitting that the Daily Mail would turn a very sweet picture into something controversial,” she said.
The administration says no final design exists for the course.
Trump first raised the project in late June on Truth Social, where he called the existing course “dilapidated, worn out, and very dangerous and outdated Golf Course.”
The DC Preservation League then filed a lawsuit over the plan. US District Judge Ana Reyes presides over the case.
Crews had already cut down more than 400 trees at the park when she barred the National Park Service from removing more earlier this week.
Administration lawyers told the court the tree removals were not part of the president’s renovation initiative.
They said the work belonged to a 2019 plan to restore the course to its original design.
Reyes questioned that argument in a memorandum issued Tuesday.
“It is a coincidence, the government seems to suggest, that DOI [Department of the Interior] cut down hundreds of trees at the course weeks after the President asked DOI to cut down trees at the course, and not, say, any other time in the last seven years,” she wrote.
Critics have pointed to Trump’s record on other Washington projects.
He demolished the White House East Wing to build a ballroom without Congressional approval, advanced plans for a 250ft arch on Columbia Island without final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, and added his name to the Kennedy Center.
All three initiatives faced legal challenges.
The Supreme Court ruled that ballroom construction can temporarily move forward. The arch and Kennedy Center plans are currently in limbo.
