Chocolate Drop: The White House Dumps Ballroom Rubble on East Potomac Golf Course

For Golf dot com, Alan Bastable has all the details that are fit to print on this strange story.

The facts:

• A large pile of rubble has recently appeared on the property of East Potomac Golf Links, a 1920s Walter Travis course owned by the National Park Service and operated by the National Links Trust.
• The dirt is coming from the White House, where, in the midst of a government shutdown, the Trump administration is carrying out a $300-million renovation project, including the construction of a state ballroom.
• The Washington Post, which first reported the story, notes that the rubble will be used to "add mounding" at East Potomac.
• The National Links Trust has redirected all press inquiries to the Department of the Interior, and the Department of the Interior has not commented on the matter.

A few observations and speculations:

• When the National Links Trust vied for and won the lease to operate East Potomac in 2019 and 2020, it declared its intention to restore the course to its original, reversible design with the help of architect Tom Doak. So far, those plans have not come to fruition. More recently, The Independent reported that President Trump "is weighing [a] refurbishment and rebranding" of the course in the image of his family's golf properties in New Jersey and Scotland. Is the delivery of fill from the White House an indication that one of those projects is underway? Unlikely. Bringing in dirt is rarely the first step of a golf course renovation project.
• Sources tell Fried Egg Golf that the construction company in charge of the rubble delivery, Clark Construction, claims that it has tested the material and insists that it does not pose a danger to golfers at East Potomac.
• Many in the D.C. area are hoping that President Trump soon loses interest in the course. However, a few sycophantic bureaucrats within the Department of the Interior, hoping to curry favor, have apparently been making sure to remind him of the potential of a flashy renovation project at East Potomac.
• This is a big mess. And dumb.