President Trump may be trying to affect voting counts in some states, but he is not in the process of stealing the White House lawn in the process. Photos of a denuded north lawn have fascinated people on social media since Monday:
Sometime between 5:30 am and now the White House North Lawn was dug up pic.twitter.com/3zEtPb3wkV
— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) November 9, 2020
The whole Four Seasons Total Landscaping thing isn’t helping calm suspicions, nor is the fact that President-Elect Biden has dogs.
Alas, there’s a beautifully, typically boring business-as-usual Washington explanation for the scorched earth in front of the People’s House, which is still remarkably fenced off from the rest of DC: “The National Park Service is doing maintenance on the irrigation system and routine turf restoration on the north lawn of the White House,” National Park Service spokesperson Katie Liming tells Washingtonian. (The President of the US lives in a National Park.)
NPS expects the work to be finished by the end of next week. Until then, enjoy the unintentional metaphor.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
