After disappearing for four days, President Trump took to Truth Social Saturday to inform the public about one thing he did this week: yell at landscapers.
His angry rant about a gardening snafu in the Rose Garden ended with a contractor being barred from the White House following a detailed investigation into a horticultural offense.
His post began with a self-congratulatory description of his passion for nice stone.
“Surfaces are very important to me as a Builder,” Trump wrote. “As everyone knows, I built many GREAT Buildings, and other things, over the years.”
He then announced that construction on the Rose Garden was complete, but not without a crucial intervention on his part.
“Three days ago, while admiring the stonework, I happened to notice a huge gash in the limestone that extended more than 25 yards long. It was deep and nasty!” he wrote.
“I started yelling, ‘Who did this, and I want to find out now!’—And I didn’t say this in a nice manner,” he continued. “I wondered, ‘Was it vandalism or, was it stupidity?’”
(Trump is famously profane, lobbing curse words against political opponents, generals, and now, perhaps, landscapers).
Luckily, President Trump wrote, the White House security system came to the rescue.
“Lo and behold, because of the fact that we’ve installed the finest security equipment anywhere, they brought back the stupid people, with their boss watching (in sunglasses!),” the president wrote.
The president paired his post with a video, seemingly taken by the security cameras he praised, that allegedly catches the offending landscapers red-handed.
In it, two landscapers can be seen wheeling a cart with foliage on top of it down a limestone path in the Rose Garden. That cart, President Trump claims, caused the apparent damage to the “soft, beautiful stone.”
The landscapers worked for a subcontractor that will not be returning to the White House grounds.
“Now, I’ll replace the stone, charge the contractor, and never let that contractor work at the White House again,” Trump wrote.
“We caught them, cold.”
So far in his second stay at the White House, President Trump has tried to remake the residence in his image, inside and out.
He has filled the Oval Office with gold filigree and completely revamped the Rose Garden, turning it into a concrete patio area that he claimed would be more suitable for women wearing high heels than the old grass.
The crown jewel of his renovations will be a $200 million ballroom that will begin construction in September.
White House contractors assigned to the ballroom project will have good reason to tread carefully after the president’s Saturday rant.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
