How Washington is being 'Trumpified' for America's 250th anniversary

And we start in the United States of America, where this year's 4th of July marks 250 years since the adaptation of the Declaration of Independence. The nation's capital has been gearing up for extravagant celebrations, and President Donald Trump has spent months, and a lot of money, scrubbing up the national monuments. But not everyone is happy about how he has put his own individual mark on them for the anniversary and beyond. Is U.S. President Trump beautifying Washington or turning it into Trump Town? From day one of his second term, Trump has been putting his mark on the U.S. Capitol. His name, his face, his aesthetic, in granite, gold, and oversized portraits. Even here, the Department of Justice, an institution that is traditionally independent from the presidency. It started with the White House. The Rose Garden paved over, the Oval Office filled with gilded decor. And I've been inside during previous administrations, and the difference is striking. Then the entire East Wing came down for a new ballroom. According to a Washington Post investigation, the price tag has risen from $200 million to $600 million. And despite Trump's promise it'd be taxpayer-free, U.S. Democrats say the American people will end up footing half the bill. A similar story played out here at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, one of the newsmakers in D.C. these days. What the president introduced in April as a $1.5 million project quietly ballooned to over $14 million. And instead of the American flag blue he promised, the water turned green. It's filled with algae. It's green. Obviously, if you don't cure the algae problem, what does it matter what color it is underneath? Well, look around. We've got a green reflecting pool. We've got a mess at the Kennedy Center. We've got all sorts of river projects that are incomplete. Then there is Trump's plan to build a massive arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Construction hasn't started yet because of congressional and legal hurdles, such as a lawsuit by Vietnam veterans who say it disrespects those buried at Arlington. Plenty of pushback, but not for every project. Some people told us they were happy that a local park and the fountains were restored. I'm not a big fan of the president, but he has done some things, some good things in terms of beautifying the city. And I bike a lot and I've ridden around to some of the fountains that have been restored and they're actually pretty beautiful. Let's zoom out of D.C. for a moment because the president also has plans to put his name and face on national currency and documents, including passports, dollar bills and gold coins. Critics say Donald Trump is blurring the line between national commemoration and personal branding. Others accuse him of vanity and behaving like an autocratic leader. He's not a king, so he's a president. So it's not appropriate. A federal judge ruled accordingly, ordering that Trump's name must be removed from Washington's famous opera house. From the Kennedy Center and the new ballroom to Donald Trump's face decorating the Department of Justice. Controversy surrounds the majority of the president's makeover. And let's bring in political scientist Scott Lucas, who's joining us from University College Dublin. Scott, Washington's monuments traditionally commemorate the nation and its history rather than individual presidents while they are still in office. To what extent has Trump upended that tradition? He's not only upended it, he has ripped it apart and he's stomped on it, almost symbolized by his destruction of part of the White House. This may be America's 250th birthday, but for Trump, this is an ego fest. Whether you talk about the planned White House ballroom, whether you talk about his attempt to put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, now blocked by a judge, whether you talk about the reflecting pool that doesn't reflect, whether you talk about the arch that's going to be bigger than the Arc de Triomphe, or even this morning his AI image of a giant golden eagle on the White House balcony. Well, there used to be a French phrase, I believe, called the state, it is me. America's 250th birthday, for Donald, it is him. I mean, we're talking about Trump here, but ultimately, this anniversary is about 250 years of American independence. How significant is this moment for the United States politically? Well, it should be a celebration of America, which is a flawed country, but a country which has espoused values, which for many people has enabled them to live lives, to progress, to build families, to build communities. I can remember in 1976, I'm that old, when despite the fact that we were coming out of Watergate, coming out of Vietnam, we were in the middle of what was called stagflation, inflation and unemployment at the same time. There still was a celebration which was about the community. It was about America. It wasn't Republican or Democrat, right or left. Now, in large part, to the man who's in the White House, this is a polarized America. So his celebrations for him will not be accepted by many Americans who question what he's doing, whereas the celebrations that many Americans partake at the local and state level will not be accepted by the Trumpists because they don't pay enough, well, what they would consider to be respect, a term I use with quotes to the current men in the Oval Office. And perhaps also interestingly, and just to put this into context, I mean, I think what you're articulating there is the acceleration of the strength of the American presidency. But this is something that has also been going on in past administrations and is not really terribly controversial and is indeed well documented. But just to follow up on my line of questioning about the US Constitution and the strength of American democracy today, this is a document that was supposed to be adaptable, that was supposed to follow into modern times. But there are articles which still are quite controversial, which are debatable. I'm thinking, for example, about the right to bear arms. Do you think that this is indeed the document that has adopted to modern times? How would you assess its success in that regard? First of all, let me just talk quickly about that notion. Yeah, the power of the presidency has expanded over the past century. We could talk about the power in the Franklin Roosevelt's administration with the New Deal and that sweeping domestic legislation, and that power then being compounded by World War II and what came after in terms of foreign policy. The difference between those times and now is that the power is being expanded, not for the service of the American state or the American people. It's being expanded for personal use. Now, the American Constitution was meant specifically to prevent that and to be adaptable to it, and it has adapted to that. This document, ratified in 1789, still with those 25 amendments that are there, has served us well. But I'll give you one example, a couple of examples. One is that the Constitution says that a president shall not profit from his office. It's called the Emoluments Clause. We have reports today, which I'm sure you're reporting on, that Donald Trump has made personally around $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency during his time in office. That is clearly a breach of the Constitution, but will he be held to account for it? I doubt it. We had a decision yesterday, which was a close-run thing, that the Constitution, a living document, provides for birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. But at least two of the judges that objected did so not on legal grounds, they did so on political grounds, that they thought it would lead to the United States being overrun. That's not the way this works. The Constitution is a document that is there even if you find it politically inconvenient. But that brings us to the heart of the Trump Project. What he and his inner circle find inconvenient is not to be observed, not to be upheld. That Constitution is to be set aside. Scott Lucas, thank you so much for joining us to share that view and perspective on this anniversary. We appreciate it. Thank you. Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author and foreign policy analyst. He's the Jean J. Cook Patrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to the day. Where are you on Donald Trump's Washington Project? City beautification or personal branding? I think it's a massive diversion from the real problems confronting this country. I don't think anybody in America other than Donald Trump looks around and says, the problem with America today is that we don't have enough monuments in Washington or that we don't have enough gold gild in the Oval Office. I think people are confronting real issues like affordability, like high gas prices, and in fact, the assaults on immigration and American values and the rule of law. Those are the problems we face, as well as a war with Iran that may or may not be over, and many other challenges. And yet, Donald Trump is not focused on any of that. He's focused on trying to build monuments essentially to himself in Washington. And that's the kind of thing that we're not used to in this country. It's the kind of thing you expect in a place like Turkmenistan, not in the United States of America. And it's unfortunate that we have a president who's obsessed with glorifying himself rather than serving the country he was elected to lead. You see, this is clearly a president who can do, who believes he can do lots of things all at the same time. This is a president who came into office in his second term, firing on all cylinders and doing all sorts of things in all sorts of different directions. He says this is about restoring beauty, order, and pride to the capital while he's doing all these other things. You say it's self-aggrandizement. Well, it clearly is self-aggrandizement. I truly don't know anybody who hasn't drunk the Maga Kool-Aid who possibly thinks that Trump is, in fact, beautifying Washington. I mean, what he's done just to the White House is appalling, where he's put all this gold all over the Oval Office. He's torn down the East Wing. It's basically a giant construction site. He's destroyed a large section of the White House lawn, which is where they had the UFC fight that he hosted a few weeks ago. So, this is not making things more beautiful. This is trying to leave monuments to the Trump presidency. And unfortunately, I think he will fail because even if he gets a lot of these things built, I suspect a lot of them will be taken down by the first Democratic president to take office. I mean, that's why past presidents haven't done this, because it really requires support in Congress. It requires bipartisan consensus. And Trump is ignoring all that and just going out and destroying things like the East Wing and trying to build without any consultation with lawmakers. Really? And you think that this goes beyond just a taste? You think that there is more significance to that? Because for the non-Americans watching, look at this. Okay, we don't like it. It's a bit gaudy. But so what? Why does it matter? Well, I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it matters more than things like the Iran war. Those are obviously more important to the world or to the frayed US relations with our friends in Europe and the NATO alliance. Those things are definitely more significant. But I think what Trump is doing in Washington also matters because it's a sign of where his head is. And it's again, it's really all about glorifying himself. He's doing it in part by taking money from shady donors and handing out no-bid contracts to his cronies. And often what he's doing is failing. I mean, we have this giant rubble pile where the East Wing was or his attempt to beautify the reflecting pool backfired and resulted in ugly algae, which he then fancifully blamed on vandals. So I think, you know, this is not necessarily the biggest problem America faces, but it is symbolic of the problems that we face, which is that Trump is not doing what a normal president should be doing, which is focusing on the welfare of the country he was elected to lead. And where do you think this sort of presidential self-aggrandizement fits into the broader picture of what you've called the corrosion of conservative norms by this Republican Party? I mean, it seems like more of a monarchist party today than a Republican Party. I mean, the Republican Party should not be all about glorifying the president and turning him into a veritable king, which is how Trump is acting, because he ignores Congress rules by executive order and tries to erode American democracy. So it's, you know, it's very sad for me to see that so few Republicans are willing to stand up to him because they're terrified that he will intervene in their primaries and they will lose office. But they're losing sight of why they, in fact, were elected to office in the first place. Republicans talk a lot about upholding the Constitution, but too often they're ignoring the Constitution, the rule of law, to make excuses for President Trump. You've written a major biography of Ronald Reagan, another president who understood image and performance. Do the two stand comparison when you look at their approaches to what you might call American myth-making? Well, there are certainly some continuities between the Reagan presidency and the Trump presidency. In 1980, Ronald Reagan even used the slogan, Make America Great Again. But I think the differences are greater than the similarities, because Ronald Reagan was an unassuming person. He was not an egomaniac. He was not somebody who was all about glorifying himself. In fact, you know, his slogan, which he displayed on a little plaque in the Oval Office, was there's no limit to what you can do if you don't care who gets the credit. So he was all about actually getting things done, and he was willing to work with Democrats to get them done. Whereas Trump doesn't really seem to care about getting things done. All he cares about is getting attention and putting his name everywhere and making money, I would add. I mean, another major difference that no previous president, Ronald Reagan or anybody else, has ever tried to profiteer off the office of the presidency in the way that Trump has, he just revealed that in his first year in office, he made more than $2 billion, which is way more than he ever made before in his life, even though he was rich to begin with. So that's really an appalling record, which there's no comparison with Reagan or anybody else in American history. And now, by the way, Trump is about to take his first flight aboard a 747 that was gifted to him by the government of Qatar in apparent violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. But that's become a kind of standard in the Trump presidency that he gets away with so many things that no previous president would have ever imagined trying to do. And you think that the next Democratic president will try and undo a lot of these expensive projects, which sounds like a very expensive waste of money? Well, some of them are already being undone, with the court, for example, ordering Trump to take his name off the Kennedy Center, which has now happened. But other projects, you know, if he manages to build this so-called Arc de Trump, I can't imagine a Democratic president allowing that to stand. I mean, if he does in fact manage to rebuild the East Wing and create a ballroom there, that may well stand because it would be too costly to tear it down and put it back as it was originally. But I think it's safe to say that Trump's attempts to put his name everywhere, because they're not being sanctioned by Congress, they're not being legislated by lawmakers, they will be very transitory. And it's kind of staggering the amount of energy and effort he's expending to do things that will likely disappear within two and a half years. Good talking to you. Thanks for joining us. Max Bood from the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you very much.