CNN’s Dana Bash Lavishes Rare Praise on Trump’s Washington D.C. Renovations

CNN’S Dana Bash gave President Donald Trump an unusual bit of praise Thursday as the White House unfurled a bizarre change at the North Portico.

Video and photos showed scaffolding and workers at the North Portico, putting up a new tarp to block the view of the administration’s next renovation project at the historic complex.

But instead of a bland tarp, the covering features an image of the columns.

Workers have for weeks been renovating the portico’s columns, CNN reported. The work follows controversy over the president’s destruction of the East Wing to make way for a ballroom and other changes.

Bash, speaking with a panel on her CNN program Inside Politics with Dana Bash that included CNN reporter Betsy Klein and Wall Street Journal scribe Josh Dawsey, dunked on the tarp before calling some of Trump’s other efforts around Washington D.C. “tremendous”:

DANA BASH: All right. So the moment you’ve all been waiting for folks, we’re going to show you a video of a scrim or a piece of tarp I guess that was unfurled over the portico that Betsy was just talking about. And that tarp shows what the new columns will look like.

So this is the actual act of changing that clearly at the direction of the president himself. Now let’s look at a live picture of the White House. So you see there the North Portico? That’s not really the North Portico.

That’s a tarp with the columns that the president likes painted on it. This is taking place at the White House as the American people are really hoping that, yeah, maybe there are some beautification projects that need to be done in Washington, but there’s also some help that they need in their lives.

BETSY KLEIN: But for Trump, this is the foundation of his legacy. He believes that this is how he will be remembered. He started in the Oval Office. He demolished the East Wing to make way for his ballroom. This is just the latest example of him trying to impose his style and taste on Washington, D.C..

JOSH DAWSEY: And if you walk around D.C., particularly down by the White House, the city looks like a construction site. I mean, the staggering number of things he’s doing, whether you like these projects or think he should be spending time on other things — city parks, the Reflecting Pool, uh, you know, the White House, obviously the ballroom part of the White House, like Lafayette Park, Logan Circle in D.C., Meridian Hill Park.

I mean, the whole city is is looking different. The big golf course that he’s trying to build to replace the public course in D.C., other parts of public land, the arc that he wants to build. I mean, it’s just a staggering number of projects.

And if you talk to people in the white house, he spends so much time on these projects. You saw Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, did an interview with Jonathan Martin from Politico, who he said, he’s calling me at eight in the morning. He’s calling me at midnight. He’s calling me all day long asking me about all of these various projects.

And the president is so focused on these projects, and maybe you love the president and think this is what he should be spending his time on. I just don’t know that in midterm elections, that it’s going to be the number one issue for voters. I guess we’ll see.

BASH: As as a D.C. resident, I think the fact that the fountains are working and they look nice again is tremendous. The columns at the White House? Not so much.

Watch above via CNN.

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