Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out National Treasure: The White House's Dirty Takeover of Public Golf Courses About this episode Golf can be for the people. But politics has come to the tee-boxes of D. C., as Trump literally takes a dump on public courses, with a gilded mission to re-shape the people's fairway — and a historically Black home of the sport — in his own image. Garrett Morrison of Fried Egg Golf explains the rubber-stamp meetings, pimp-my-ride addendums and bros in the ear of a president chasing faux-luxury waterfalls, A. I. logos and... asbestos?
• Read more at Fried Egg Golf: "The National Links Trust's Battle with the Trump Administration, Explained" https://www.thefriedegg.com/articles/dc-golf-trump-national-links-trust-explained
• Subscribe to "Designing Golf" https://pod.link/1792221791 with Garrett Morrison
• Previously on PTFO: Why Golf Yalta Explains Donald Trump https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyYWFmNzgtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtY2Y0YTJlZWRmMjE1
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:07 Speaker 01 What I've heard is that in response to this proposal from Secretary Burgum, President Trump said something to the effect of, "Doug, that's the best idea you've ever had."
0:19 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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1:57 Pablo Torre? This story is about land. It is about real estate. It's also about golf, and I am not the biggest golf expert, which is why Garrett Morrison, you are here. Thank you for joining us, by the way.
2:07 Speaker 01 Of course.
2:08 Pablo Torre? Your specialty is architecture and design and golf courses. But this story, as a golf casual, is so much bigger than that. And it starts with a scene that is even weirder than I think people realize, because it's Washington, DC. It's late October, and what is happening?
2:26 Speaker 01 So President Trump is renovating the east wing of the White House.
2:32 Speaker 03 Demolition has begun on the east wing of the White House to make way for the president's 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which is expected to cost around $200 million. It's being paid for by the-
2:43 Speaker 01 I actually don't know that much about that specific renovation project. I think I have willfully avoided knowledge about what exactly is going on there.
2:51 Pablo Torre? You haven't seen the closest thing we have had in American history to that scene in Independence Day, where like the White House explodes and there's like shrapnel and debris. It's one of those things where if this was being done by a guy Donald Trump was running against, this would just be on loop endlessly.
3:10 Speaker 01 It would be a scandalous image. I mean, essentially, it's a big pit. And so we're digging this big hole. And so we have a lot of dirt. What do we do with the dirt? Where do we take the dirt?
3:21 Pablo Torre? And our news cycle is so [bleeped] these days that one of the things that gets buried by all of the other stuff that's happening, Venezuela and Greenland and all of these other real estate projects, so to speak, is where the east wing of the White House, the former east wing, is literally getting buried.
3:39 Speaker 01 Late October, dirt is being dumped on East Potomac golf links. Massive dump trucks full of dirt are being taken onto the golf course and put in a particular area at East Potomac. And a lot of golfers have no idea where this is coming from.
4:02 Pablo Torre? And the way that I first heard about this is through a friend of mine, a friend of mine named Josh Bard in DC. He is a listener of the show and he sent me a cellphone video he took of East Potomac Golf Course, a place he loves and has played many times. And the video has clearly like construction fences all around the golf course. There are these piles of dirt. So he's just like panoramically, just like looking around the course. And at the end, you'll hear the honking of that guy. According to Josh, that is a government agent who honked at him to stop him from taking this video. And Josh was told apparently
4:46 Pablo Torre? that he couldn't be there. Josh asks the agent why not. The agent would not explain. And so the question of like, what is happening here? What are they hiding? It piqued my curiosity. And now here we are a couple of months later.
4:58 Speaker 01 There is a big backstory to this dirt. There is a lot of information that you need to know about East Potomac Golf Links and about the Trump administration's plans for East Potomac Golf Links in order to understand where this big pile of dirt is coming from.
5:35 Pablo Torre? So typically, when this show talks about dirt, it tends to be a figure of speech, as in, "pay dirt," or "information that someone actively does not want us to find out about." This is gonna be an episode that is also about actual soil.
5:53 Speaker 01 But buried within the dirt is a lot of interesting stuff and things that, you know, I've worked on uncovering recently, but not a lot of people know about it.
6:06 Pablo Torre? In fact, the whole reason we've been partnering here with writer Garrett Morrison, who is from an independent golf outlet called Fried Egg, is to bring you original reporting. Not because I love the singular inaccessibility of the sport of golf and its unaffordable country clubs.
6:22 Pablo Torre? But because of the opposite, actually, as best exemplified by a story that goes to the highest levels of American government, but starts on the ground, literally in this case, with a question you ought to know the answer to. Who is Donald Trump dumping on?
6:42 Speaker 01 There is currently a leaseholder in charge of this golf course and the other municipal golf courses in Washington DC. And that leaseholder is the National Links Trust.
6:55 Speaker 04 National Links Trust has been granted a once in a generation opportunity to rehabilitate the historic municipal golf courses in our nation's capital. The roots of these courses run deep. They're national treasures, and they belong to the people.
7:13 Speaker 01 In 2020, the National Links Trust signed a 50-year lease to manage and improve the three municipal golf courses of Washington DC. Those golf courses are East Potomac Golf Links, as well as Rock Creek Park Golf Course, and Langston Golf Course. And so, five years ago, the NLT took on these golf courses and promised to manage them well and improve them. So that is the entity in charge of East Potomac Golf Links. That is the organization that is taking on this dirt from the White House.
7:52 Pablo Torre? And so, we here at Palpati Torre finds out, called up somebody who apparently has to deal with all the dirt landing on his doorstep.
7:58 Speaker 05 My name's Damian Cosby. I'm the Executive Director for National Links Trust.
8:03 Pablo Torre? And I asked if Damian Cosby would clarify what his organization does day to day.
8:08 Speaker 05 I'd say first and foremost, we're a community-based organization. Everything we do is based around how it benefits the DC community and the DMV community on a broader scale. You know, at our heart, obviously, our core, we are operating the three municipal golf courses in Washington DC. But we feel like that golf is really something that can bring communities together. We feel like the three facilities in Washington DC are community centers and should be accessible to everyone in the community regardless if you play golf or not. So we are very.
8:43 Pablo Torre? And there's this phrase right now in American politics and American life affordability. And in a sports context, you're like, okay, what does that really mean? And then doing this story, I'm like, it means this place.
8:57 Speaker 01 The vision of a municipal golf course in America is really idealistic. The idea is that you provide affordable, accessible recreation for the masses. And so for, you know, more than a century now, a lot of different cities across the United States have found it to be a good idea to have municipal golf systems just for the general health and wellbeing of the public. And so municipal golf is part of this notion of an affordable city. Because affordability isn't just about having cheap stuff. It's about quality of life.
9:35 Pablo Torre? Yes.
9:35 Speaker 01 Right?
9:36 Pablo Torre? Yes.
9:37 Speaker 01 It's about being able to do things that you think are only reserved for a certain social class. And golf is one of those things that can be available to everybody and not just to a select few.
9:50 Pablo Torre? But East Potomac, the place that is getting dumped on, if you were to describe what it looks like on an average, normal day, when you show up, what does it look like?
10:01 Speaker 01 East Potomac Golf Links is incredibly busy and lively. Surrounding East Potomac, there are public walking trails. There's a public park right next to East Potomac Golf Links that can be used for picnics and things like that. There are cherry blossom trees that are part of the annual cherry blossom festival in Washington DC. So lots of people use this area who are not golfers. But among the golfers, you have all sorts of people. Golf is a sport that you can play from the moment you're about five years old until maybe the day before you die. It is one of those games that doesn't have kind of a. Baseline physical requirement. And what East Potomac does is it allows people an entry point into the game. There's a mini golf course.
10:46 Speaker 01 Even as a non golfer, Pablo, I assume that you've you've played mini golf before.
10:50 Pablo Torre? I took notice of what is presented as the oldest continuously operating mini golf course in America.
10:56 Speaker 01 Yes, which was recently restored by the National Links Trust as part of its improvement program at these courses. So there's that. And then you have a driving range. You have practice areas where you can kind of learn the full game of golf. Then you can go to a nine hole par three course, the red course at East Potomac. Then you can go to the white course, which is an executive course. That's kind of a mixture of short par fours and par threes. And then finally, once you've been playing for a while, you can graduate to the blue course, which is a regulation 18 hole golf course at East Potomac. So there's this really broad offering at East Potomac for all levels of golfer.
11:37 Pablo Torre? It's this dream of like, wait a minute, what if golf wasn't just cordoned off behind security and these gates and long driveways? What if it was in a park?
11:48 Speaker 05 It is amazing to see the just the cross section of people that are there enjoying this game. And one of the things I love about municipal golf is we meet people where they are. You know, if you're somebody that is not a khaki pants and button up shirt guy and you know, foot joy wing tip golf shoes, that's okay with us. You know, if you want to wear your your tennis shoes to come play golf and, you know, gym shorts, we're happy to have you.
12:14 Pablo Torre? So this is not just about East Potomac, of course. It's about the other properties here as well, the other two courses, Rock Creek and Langston, and how important they are to Washington DC. There is so much sports and American history in this.
12:27 Speaker 05 Langston is, I would say, one of the most important golf courses in the country. The history that's there. So if you go back 100 plus years during the time of segregation, black golfers had no place to play in DC. The two oldest men's and women's black golf groups, the Wake Robins and the Royals Golf Clubs, lobbied the Department of Interior to build a golf course for black golfers, and it was Langston.
12:51 Speaker 01 Langston Golf Course, more than the other municipal golf courses of Washington DC, was the site of some really high quality golf. This is a serious golf course for serious players. So East Potomac is kind of the beginner's course. Langston is the, is the rainbow road, you know?
13:10 Pablo Torre? Now we're speaking my language.
13:13 Speaker 01 Langston, Langston is the final boss.
13:15 Speaker 05 So Langston was, was constructed, the original front nine was constructed at its current site and it used to be the old DC trash dump. So you can imagine, they probably picked the worst place to put the golf course for black golfers. The historical importance of that facility can't be understated.
13:33 Speaker 01 And a lot of, in particular, great black players came out of Langston.
13:38 Speaker 06 This is something that I've been wanting for a long time and I'd like to try to do my best. The pressure then that I feel right now, it does just no more than the pressure of the tournament itself.
13:50 Speaker 05 Lee Elder, who broke the color barrier at the Masters in 1975, managed the property for several years back in the late seventies and eighties with his wife, Rose Harper. Some of the greats that have ever played this game of golf have played at Langston. Jim Thorpe, Lee Elder, Al Green, I could go on and on and on. They walked those fairways. So I, I, I personally believe it's the home to black golf in America because of where it's situated and how it was created. And it gave, it gave black golfers an outlet and that it was, it was, the black golfers, it was their home and it still is their home to this day.
14:27 Pablo Torre? Washington DC, once known as Chocolate City, was a majority black place for decades upon decades.
14:33 Speaker 01 And Langston ended up being just kind of this hub of black golf, not only in DC, but in America in general. Then you go to Rock Creek Park Golf Course and you have an architect, an original architect in William Flynn, who's one of the best regarded golf architects of all time. William Flynn designed the current course at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, which is a regular host of the US Open. In fact, will be hosting the US Open this year.
15:02 Pablo Torre? On Long Island, yes, in the Hamptons.
15:04 Speaker 01 Great golf course and he was a great golf architect. His design lineage is in Rock Creek Park.
15:13 Pablo Torre? And so Damian and this nonprofit, they attempt to realize their vision for these courses after getting this lease back in 2020. But when do they realize that their vision for these courses and Trump's vision for these courses might be very, very, very different?
15:29 Speaker 01 So, early in 2025, NLT officials started to have conversations with officials at the Department of the Interior about what to do with these golf courses, about how to speed up the timelines for the renovation projects that the National Links Trust has long wanted to do. And eventually, it became clear that the Trump administration wanted to exercise more control over the fate of these golf courses. One really obvious signal to the National Links Trust that the federal government had a different idea about what to do specifically with East Potomac Golf Links was the arrival
16:09 Speaker 01 of another golf architect to East Potomac and the White House.
16:15 Speaker 05 How do you create a golf course for the best players in the world and then for the rest of us? That's what we've always worked on.
16:23 Speaker 01 In October, Tom Fazio visited the White House and had a long conversation with President Trump. And he also visited East Potomac Golf Links and toured the golf courses with a small group of government officials. Tom Fazio did this, I've heard, under a pseudonym. And so he did not introduce himself as Tom or Mr. Fazio, but instead introduced himself by a different name.
16:52 Pablo Torre? Wait, what was noted golf architect Tom Fazio's, what was his pseudonym?
16:56 Speaker 01 I've heard Bill.
16:59 Pablo Torre? And it is, of course, appropriate that a Bill is also a dollar. Bill slash Tom Fazio, his sort of like rep in the world of golf, just to be very clear about it, he is an elite course maker for very fancy projects.
17:17 Speaker 01 Yes. Tom Fazio has an approach to golf course design that would not be normally associated with municipal golf. Tom Fazio often does highly luxurious, high-end projects and works for high-end clients. Several times, Tom Fazio has specifically worked with the Trump Organization, Trump Golf. Obviously, President Donald Trump has a golf company that right now his sons are mostly in charge of running. But over the decades, Tom Fazio has been a go-to architect for President Donald Trump and his golf company.
17:56 Speaker 01 And there are varying opinions about the quality of Fazio's architecture. Certainly, he does have his fans, and a lot of people consider his stuff to be extremely well-executed. But I would say there are many other people, including me, who consider his work to be kind of faux-luxury.
18:15 Pablo Torre? Well, how dare you? How dare you describe Trump National Golf Club Bedminster and Trump National West Palm Beach in such a way?
18:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, that is how I would describe them. And, you know, and some people would strongly disagree with that characterization. But, you know, I'm somebody who really likes to see naturalism in golf courses. There are a lot of golfers who like their golf courses to feel as though they're properly part of the natural environment, and therefore have some ruggedness to them. Ruggedness is not really what Tom Fazio does. We're talking about waterfalls and really nicely sculpted waterscapes and things of that nature.
18:58 Pablo Torre? What we're talking about is whatever Donald Trump is doing to replace the East Wing. We're talking about that general aesthetic also applying to the place that he is dumping the East Wing upon.
19:08 Speaker 01 Right. If people are familiar with the new furnishings in the White House, so gilt sconces and stuff like that. This is sort of what I would consider to be a pretty accurate analog to a lot of Tom Fazio's architecture.
19:24 Pablo Torre? Right. What if we could put more gold in your gold?
19:27 Speaker 01 It would be even better.
19:33 Pablo Torre? And I just gotta jump in here to say that I don't think Donald Trump, or his sons, or Tom Fazio, aka Bill, would even object to our description there. Their whole aesthetic is very intentionally exclusive and expensive, which makes it the diametric opposite of the accessibility and affordability of the National Links Trust.
19:55 Pablo Torre? But it's also important to point out that Fazio and the Trumps are far from alone in our government's apparent mission to gild these historic public courses, which are ostensibly overseen by the National Park Service, which sits inside the Department of the Interior.
20:10 Speaker 01 First of all, you have the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, and that is Doug Burgum.
20:16 Speaker 05 It's certainly an honor to have been nominated by President Trump to serve as the 55th Secretary of the Interior.
20:23 Speaker 01 Doug Burgum is the former governor of North Dakota, and, you know, he appears to be a big drill baby drill guy.
20:33 Speaker 05 We know that one thing that President likes to say, and I'm sure he'll hear it to say, which he wants us to drill baby drill, and we're gonna do that.
20:39 Speaker 01 It's not clear to me that he was particularly interested in the National Park Service's Gulf holdings before this opportunity came about. It's not clear what his real connection to the game is, but he certainly has become involved in the situation within the past few months.
20:59 Pablo Torre? Well, and he's also a guy who's been very vocal, very supportive about, I mean, truly, Donald Trump taking over Greenland. He once told a story in this ongoing sort of like rebranding campaign of this administration about flying to the Super Bowl with Donald Trump on Air Force One as they flew over what they no longer call the Gulf of Mexico.
21:21 Speaker 05 Part of the reason he wanted to fly from there to New Orleans was that Air Force One would be flying over the Gulf of America. So we had all the documentation ready, and then it's not just a simple piece of paper. When the name actually changes, the US Geological Survey then populates information to our system, which then are picked up by people like Apple Maps, Google Maps, and those around the world. And so we had to coordinate with the whole, both private and public sector mapping world, and with the captain and crew of Air Force One to know when we're gonna take off, when we're gonna be over the Gulf.
21:55 Speaker 04 We did it at that moment.
21:57 Speaker 05 We did it at that moment.
21:59 Pablo Torre? And so that guy alone, it's just clear, okay, he's on board with all of the let's remake this, let's take this and put it into our own image. That's Doug Burgum.
22:09 Speaker 01 A sort of aggressive stance toward the government's land is how you might characterize this attitude.
22:19 Pablo Torre? But Doug Burgum also has a very important caddy of sorts inside the Department of the Interior. And we should meet him too.
22:29 Speaker 05 I have not started working at the Department of Interior yet, so I'm not familiar with what appropriated funds have or have not been spent. But as
22:37 Speaker 01 William Daugherty Meyer is the solicitor of the Department of the Interior. He was actually just confirmed in October, but he was nominated earlier in the year and he has been operating essentially as if the solicitor already for several months now. And it was William Daugherty Meyer really who brought this situation with the three DC municipal courses to the attention of Doug Burgum and eventually to President Donald Trump.
23:07 Pablo Torre? So he's actually a golf guy.
23:09 Speaker 01 William Daugherty Meyer is a golf guy. He belongs to Chevy Chase Country Club in the DC area and Chevy Chase is among the most elite courses in the DC area. This is the course you belong to if you're really after the top club. And so it was sort of natural that he would develop a relationship with the officials at the National Links Trust. He started discussing things with the NLT in late spring and early summer of 2025. And those discussions evolved in kind of a strange direction.
23:47 Pablo Torre? What do you mean by that?
23:49 Speaker 01 Initially, he presented himself to the NLT as a potential liaison with President Trump. I can help you guys get done what you want to get done by smoothing the compliance process with the National Park Service, which the NLT was having difficulty with.
24:06 Pablo Torre? Right.
24:06 Speaker 01 And Daugherty Meyer appears to have been aware of that. And so he's saying, I can help you guys out. But eventually. NLT officials became aware that he was kind of coming up with his own plans for this project and that he had a different vision for East Potomac Golf Links that eventually he and Secretary Burgum presented to President Trump on August 1st.
24:31 Pablo Torre? So let's go inside this meeting, right? So it's August 1st, 2025. It's Doftmeyer, it's Burgum, it's Trump, it's the Department of the Interior heads and the President. And they are meeting, I just want to list them off here, US Attorney and frequent golf partner Jay Clayton, Johnny DiStefano, who is the former Trump administration official, Taylor Budowich, who is the then senior advisor to the President, and Susie Wiles, who is the White House Chief of Staff, and as must be noted on a sports show, the daughter of the late Pat Summerall, one of the great NFL announcers of all time. And so as they marched down the field, as it were, on this project, what are they trying to do here in this meeting?
25:10 Speaker 01 So in this meeting, the intention seems to be to just make President Trump aware of the potential of East Potomac Golf Links and get him to informally sign off on moving ahead with the Department of the Interior's intentions with this project. It appears to have been Doftmeyer who made it clear to the room that he had a connection with the National Links Trust and could in some way influence what they were doing. And at some point in the meeting, President Trump said something to the effect of, well, why do we need the National Links Trust? Do we really need these guys?
25:50 Speaker 01 It's not clear whether Doftmeyer or Trump first suggested this, but one outcome of the meeting was that perhaps the easiest path forward would be to find the NLT in default of its lease.
26:05 Pablo Torre? And so in your reporting on this, Garrett, is there, I guess for journalistic thoroughness, I gotta ask, like, is there proof? Is there documentation of this closed-door meeting you've been describing?
26:15 Speaker 01 Yes. So a source close to this situation delivered to me a photo of East Potomac Golf Links with a new logo on it, which I've heard is AI-generated.
26:30 Speaker 01 And a new name, Washington National Golf Course.
26:35 Pablo Torre? So just to spell out what's happening here. So they're like, why do we need these guys? Why do we need the NLT? What if we create basically, yeah, this pitch deck? This, you know, architectural rendering of what a new, fancier, exclusive, better course would be. And the name of it, Washington National Golf Course with, yeah, I'm looking at this, the seal across the top. And I'm like, what, what the is any of this? As the Washington Monument, by the way, is like, sort of like bathed in, in golden hour sunlight in the background.
27:11 Speaker 01 Beautiful picture. Yeah, it's kind of like a coat of arms, I guess you, you would characterize the logo as. This is, this is sort of similar to a lot of the logos that you see at President Trump's golf courses.
27:26 Pablo Torre? It's sort of like, you know, fancy hotel historical cosplay.
27:31 Speaker 01 You can definitely imagine this logo kind of applied to.
27:35 Pablo Torre? A bathtub?
27:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, to a bathtub. Yeah, exactly. And then this name, Washington National Golf Course, is notable, I think.
27:44 Pablo Torre? In cursive, of course, almost calligraphy.
27:46 Speaker 01 Yes. Washington National Golf Course makes the course sound a little fancier and more prestigious than East Potomac golf links. Of course, Augusta National Golf Club.
27:58 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, rings a bell. Yep.
28:00 Speaker 01 Venue of the masters and.
28:02 Pablo Torre? The club that Donald Trump would most like to join, I would have to imagine that he still is not a member of.
28:08 Speaker 01 It's up there. It would be up there. And there are certain clubs that over the years have not really made space for the Trump family. There is a kind of tier of blue blood courses in the US that are very desirable to gain access to for everybody, including President Trump. And so to call your course national is to sort of try to associate yourself with the most prominent elite club in the United States.
28:39 Speaker 01 I also think it's notable that the photo doesn't really show the golf course as it currently exists, right?
28:44 Pablo Torre? No.
28:45 Speaker 01 You can't really see.
28:46 Pablo Torre? There's no, none of the mini golf, none of the fun stuff you're describing, picnics, trails.
28:49 Speaker 01 No driving range.
28:50 Pablo Torre? No.
28:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, no cherry blossom trees. The main subject of this photo is the Washington Monument. And the main value of this land, this park, this golf course, is really its location, its unique location.
29:04 Pablo Torre? Location, location, location. All of which is to say that when you see this photo and you analyze it in our history class that we just held, yeah, I get it. Of course Donald Trump would love nothing more than to throw all of this dirt on this course that he's decorated with this AI-generated image.
29:23 Speaker 01 The signature below this logo and name, it should be clear, is President Trump's signature. And so this was done during that August 1st meeting. And, and you could interpret this as a kind of seal of approval. Go ahead, let's do this. The Trump administration is making another move to take over a high-profile civic space as the president tries to put his mark on the nation's capital.
29:47 Speaker 05 The Interior says it's ousting the nonprofit that currently manages the courses. The nonprofit National Links Trust was just five years into a 50-year lease. We've had great partners in the Park Service and, you know, we were sort of blindsided by this.
30:03 Pablo Torre? We're taken to December 30th, 2025, when the Interior Department sends this notice to National Links Trust to Damian, in which they learn their lease is being officially terminated. It's kind of obvious now, darkly funny how obvious now what's happening is, that Trump isn't just using East Potomac as this, you know, garbage dump, he's dumping the dirt because he's using the dirt now to reshape and remold and to architect a golf course in his own image. But it's on Air Force One where he finally just says it. What's your plan for East Potomac? Are you gonna renovate the golf course?
30:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, we're gonna make it a beautiful world-class US Open caliber course that ideally we're gonna have major tournaments there.
30:49 Pablo Torre? Everything else that's going to bring a lot of business into Washington. He's just doing to East Potomac what he did to the East Wing, but using the East Wing's remains to do it.
30:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, that that would be a pretty solid comparison.
31:02 Pablo Torre? Is this a reminder that Donald Trump says he cares about foreign policy? And he is certainly going to take Greenland, he's going to take Venezuela, all that stuff. We also know, you know, Garrett, the dude actually loves golf. Like, that's actually his passion. So it is unsurprising that a real estate deal emerges in which, of course, of course, this administration, this news cycle is always going to be heading right this way.
31:27 Speaker 01 If you think about it, the only surprising thing is that it didn't happen earlier, that it didn't happen during the first Trump administration. You know, the president flies in a helicopter over East Potomac golf links on a regular basis. It's right there, basically, in the mix with the Pentagon and the National Mall. The president loves golf, is a very capable golfer, has been in the golf business for decades. And so, yes, when you think about it that way, it is not unexpected that he would take a direct interest in this specific golf course.
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33:21 Pablo Torre? So you may now be wondering how the federal government is legally justifying terminating the lease of the National Links Trust, the caretaker of these historic public courses, given that the lease they signed took effect in 2020. It was supposed to last for 50 years before being terminated on December 30th, 2025, just five years in. And I will admit here that even bothering to ponder legality these days with the government the way it is feels pretty useless. But we are a show that does try to care about transparency and the rule of law. And so, here goes.
34:01 Speaker 01 The biggest claim that the government is making against the NLT is that the NLT has failed to make substantial capital improvements to the golf courses according to the schedule that was laid out in the lease. And specifically being referred to here is Exhibit D of the lease. I know you like this stuff.
34:24 Pablo Torre? This is really the pimp my ride of addendums. What if you put another addendum inside your addendum?
34:29 Speaker 01 This is right up your alley.
34:31 Pablo Torre? And what the Trump administration is basically doing, it turns out, is calling the National Links Trust a deadbeat tenant. And their proof, as Garrett mentioned, is Exhibit D. The part of the document where the trust proposes a very ambitious schedule of renovating Rock Creek Park by 2022, Langston by 2024, and East Potomac by 2027. Renovations which are not yet complete. But if you talk to the National Links Trust, what they will say is, "Hold on. We can only renovate these federal lands as quickly as the federal bureaucracy allows us to." And then in fact, the lease explicitly acknowledges that permission structure.
35:18 Pablo Torre? And this problem.
35:20 Speaker 01 One key phrase in Exhibit D needs to be cited here. And that phrase is, "Timeframes are general and subject to change due to compliance timeframes or other circumstances." In other words, these dates are goals. They're not promises. Nothing can be promised when you're dealing with regulatory processes in the federal government.
35:46 Pablo Torre? What the National Links Trust also wants to be clear about here is something else, which is that if you actually review their most recent Form 990, which is the government form a nonprofit has to file every year, this is publicly accessible, you will see that by the end of 2024, the trust spent more than $6.5 million on improvements listed under the Land, Buildings and Equipment section. And then there's the more than $800,000 they spent across repairs and maintenance and independent contractors to renovate these three courses, accounting for altogether more than $7 million in capital improvements alone, right there. And this does not count 2025, by the way. The Form 990 for 2025 has not yet been released.
36:31 Pablo Torre? But what the NLT tells us is that they spent in excess of $3 million on renovations last year, meaning that what we're now talking about is more than $10 million in capital improvements. All of which is worth noting, because what this administration is now also saying is this.
36:52 Speaker 01 The government is claiming that the NLT owes as much as $8.8 million in unpaid rent. And this claim is made in the termination letter, signed by William Doffermeyer, as a kind of side note, right? It's not clear to me that this is one of the claims that is causing the termination of the lease. It's just kind of an extra, "Hey, look at this. What's up with this, guys? This could be litigated. We could come after you for this $8.8 million."
37:23 Pablo Torre? Which does sound pretty bad. But there's another aspect of this lease which explains all of this, according to the National Links Trust, which is that the lease says that if the trust spends money on these capital improvement projects, for instance, say between $7 to $10 million.
37:44 Pablo Torre? Then they receive an equivalent rent offset from the federal government, which wipes out unpaid rent. For instance, $8.8 million of unpaid rent.
37:57 Speaker 01 The National Links Trust says yes. NPS was aware of the rent offsets and approved each and every one of them. And if this issue gets to litigation, I suspect there will be a big paper trail that establishes that there was a lot of collaboration between the NLT and the MPS on this issue of rent offsets.
38:20 Pablo Torre? But meanwhile, the federal government, for their part, in response to a detailed list of questions from Pablo Torre, finds out about this entire mess, did not respond.
38:32 Pablo Torre? But the mess, that brings us back to the mess we started with, to the giant pile of dirt that started showing up on October 24th, 2025, on that public course. So according to your sources, Garrett, what is the impetus? Who is the genius behind the dirt?
38:53 Speaker 01 There was a whole series of events that preceded the actual dumping of the dirt at East Potomac Golf Links. So back in September, President Trump was discussing the east wing dirt with a group of advisors, including Secretary of the DOI Doug Burgum. And it was apparently Burgum who suggested taking the dirt from the east wing to East Potomac in preparation for an eventual renovation project, which was discussed with President Trump on August 1st. And what I've heard is that in response to this proposal from Secretary Burgum, President Trump said something to the effect of,
39:37 Speaker 01 "Doug, that's the best idea you've ever had." So he loved this idea of taking the dirt from the east wing to kind of jumpstart this other project that was maybe in the pipeline at East Potomac Golf Links.
39:52 Pablo Torre? Right. And one of those things, by the way, among the many ingredients here in the dirt, potentially, is maybe asbestos?
40:00 Speaker 01 One would assume that because this dirt is being taken from the rubble of an old building.
40:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, a more than century old structure once known as the east wing.
40:11 Speaker 01 You know, pre-code kind of stuff we're talking about here. The, you know, construction regulations weren't quite what they are now when this building was built. And so the question of what is in this dirt is an interesting one and a valid one for the golfers who are now right next to this big pile of stuff. What is it exactly that I'm breathing in here?
40:33 Pablo Torre? Right. And the residents who surround it. This is a golf course in the city. And so Politico has a headline, quote, "White House dodged east wing asbestos permits." The Washington Post headline, "Senators, comma, advocates demand explanation on asbestos risks from east wing."
40:49 Speaker 01 And this would be a pretty elegant idea if, one, the dirt is not toxic, and it's not totally clear to me that the dirt is non-toxic. And two, if the dirt could be taken to exactly the right place for a potential renovation project. Usually what you do when you renovate a golf course is you bring in the dirt right near the beginning of a renovation project. You don't bring it two years ahead of time. And so what they've had to do with this dirt is kind of tuck it away in a random corner of the property where they will have to move it again before they even use it on the golf course. And that is kind of a problem. The timeline doesn't really match up.
41:31 Pablo Torre? So this one detail here about just the dirt being tested, the National Park Service has been testing the dirt, but they haven't passed along the results to the National Links Trust?
41:41 Speaker 01 This is what I've heard. So first of all, there is the construction company in charge of delivering the dirt, and that is Clark Construction. And Clark Construction says that it has been testing the dirt at the East Wing site, but they haven't been testing for everything that would need to be tested for. They're kind of just testing for one thing. And then the National Park Service has, you know, made it clear that they are testing the dirt at East Potomac Golf Links for toxicity, but no one at the NLT is aware of what the results of that testing have been. So we don't really know what the status of this dirt is,
42:24 Speaker 01 whether it's a danger to people. There have been tests, but the results of those tests have not been transparent.
42:41 Speaker 02 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.
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42:54 Speaker 02 like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. With the Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.
43:45 Pablo Torre? And so if the Trump administration is fulfilling their vision as they have signaled, when would Washington National Golf Course actually be open?
43:55 Speaker 01 Really, if it proceeds along the same timeline as pretty much any other ambitious municipal golf renovation project, it would be at least several years from now. It takes so long, as the NLT has proved
44:10 Pablo Torre? Yes.
44:11 Speaker 01 at the other sites that it manages to get these projects permitted and to get them moving forward. And you have to fundraise for them as well, which the NLT has been doing. You have to save up money. And so it takes a long time to do anything at any golf course, especially a municipal golf course on national parkland. I think there's an idea that because it has the endorsement of President Trump, that it would move through very quickly. And that's very possible. He might sort of lean on the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to get this all squared away, send in Tom Fazio with his bulldozers, and do this thing super quickly. A renovation of this type,
44:55 Speaker 01 once it begins, can unfold over the course of about a year. If you close down the golf course and just strip everything away and just do it all at once, then a year, year and a half, maybe two years, you can get the work done in that period. But the question is how long the process takes leading up to that point. And if I were a betting man, I would say that it would be very, very difficult, verging on impossible, to finish it before President Trump's term ends.
45:27 Pablo Torre? Well, there is a solution to that. That is to not end the term.
45:32 Speaker 01 2028?
45:34 Pablo Torre? Which has also been actively discussed by the same administration. But as I imagine, okay, like, who would be the sponsors to come in? In the way that sponsors came in to help fund the renovation, the destruction of the East Wing and the new ballroom being built. I am wondering, okay, let's now imagine we're there. We're on this sun-dappled course and they're trying to host a major. That's the dream. The dream is let's get a US Open hosted right here in front of the Washington Monument, as Donald Trump said on Air Force One.
46:07 Speaker 01 A US Open is an enormous event. You need a lot of space and a lot of infrastructure to pull off a US Open. Now, it's also been floated, according to rumors, that a Ryder Cup maybe would be a very attractive proposition for the renovated East Potomac Golf Links/Washington National Golf Course. The Ryder Cup is even bigger. The build-out for a Ryder Cup is absolutely massive. And so you have being proposed two events that are huge in scale. East Potomac Park is not huge in scale. It's a pretty tight piece of property. They would probably have to build an 18-hole golf course that occupies about the footprint
46:52 Speaker 01 that 36 golf holes currently occupy. Yes, there are 36 golf holes there right now, but they're all packed together pretty tightly. They are mostly shorter golf holes than would be used for a championship golf course. So step one would be to expand the golf course and make it big enough to host a professional tournament because, you know, golf pros these days hit the ball a long, long way. You know, think of Bryson DeChambeau, who has been involved with the Trump administration. The guy can hit the ball about 400 yards when he feels like it. And so you need a very long golf course to accommodate a tournament like this. And then you need a lot of space for parking, for the tent city that comes along with a Ryder Cup or a US Open.
47:37 Speaker 01 You need a place to stage the broadcast. You need grandstands. Where are you going to put the grandstands? In East Potomac Park. It's an island.
47:47 Speaker 01 These are things that that people have been wondering when they have heard of this idea of hosting a tournament of that scale at East Potomac Park, it just doesn't seem possible.
47:57 Pablo Torre? Wait a minute, just to clarify, because what I'm finding out here is that even if you get through all the legal hurdles and you get on the other side of this construction process and all of this manifests that AI-generated image, what you're saying is that there's a fundamental problem with this course, which is that there's not enough room to actually host the tournament Donald Trump is doing this whole thing for.
48:21 Speaker 01 It would be very difficult to find that room. All of the other stuff that is in East Potomac Park right now, the roads, the walking trails and biking trails, the picnic area, everything else that is within the golf facility, you would need to basically get rid of all of that in order to build a golf course big enough. Then you would need basically the size of that golf course again to accommodate everything that comes with a US Open or a Ryder Cup. And so I'm looking at the Google Earth images of this area and thinking, is it the Pentagon? Are they gonna do the parking at the Pentagon?
48:57 Pablo Torre? Can we put the grandstands?
48:59 Speaker 01 National Mall?
49:00 Pablo Torre? Atop the Pentagon. It almost is quaint now to raise my follow-up question, I think a fundamental one to this whole story, which is, so is this thing going to be just a private course? Or will there be a public aspect to whatever Washington National Golf Club may be?
49:22 Speaker 01 I have not heard any strong indication that administration officials want to fully turn Washington National Golf Course private. And even doing that would be so complicated because East Potomac Park is on the National Register of Historic Places. These are federal lands. It would be very difficult to You know, rezone this property or fundamentally change its legal character. What I have heard, however, is that there is a feeling in the administration that you could charge a much higher green fee than is currently being charged at East Potomac Golf Links.
50:02 Pablo Torre? So going from what to what roughly, would you say?
50:04 Speaker 01 So right now, the 18-hole course at East Potomac charges $42 for an 18-hole round during weekdays and then charges $48 on the weekend. And just to give people an idea, that might sound like a fair amount of money, but that is way undercutting the rates at pretty much any other golf course in the area. So this is, this is an affordable rate. And then you have the other golf courses, the nine-holders, where you can pay lower rates to play. Seniors get a discount, juniors get a discount, military gets a discount. There are a lot of ways to pay less money at East Potomac. So we're talking about a peak rate that is under $50.
50:44 Speaker 01 What I've heard is that there might be a desire to turn this into a kind of like $1,000 green fee golf course. Not for locals, but for non-residents, you would come in and pay a premium. And this is a model that is pretty common at high-profile municipal golf courses like Torrey Pines in San Diego or Harding Park in San Francisco. You charge non-residents a higher rate to kind of fund the golf course and then residents pay a lower rate. And this is something that President Trump actually said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in December. He said DC residents will pay a lower rate than other golfers.
51:28 Speaker 01 But a lower rate than what? I very much doubt that the ultimate rate at a golf course like this for locals, for anybody, would be $42 or $48. It might be less than that peak green fee of whatever it is, maybe $1,000, which would, by the way, be way more than any municipal course in America currently charges.
51:53 Pablo Torre? And the intention of the administration in terms of what's going to happen to Rock Creek and Langston? What is the forecast looking like at this point in the calendar?
52:03 Speaker 01 I have no idea. And that itself is pretty strange. There is this sort of grand plan for East Potomac Golf Links, sitting on this manmade island in the middle of the Potomac River, near the National Mall with views of the Washington Monument. But it's really unclear to me what the administration's intentions are, or even level of interest in Rock Creek Park and Langston Golf Course is. The NLT had very clear plans for East Potomac, but they were actually gonna do Rock Creek Park and Langston first on their renovation timeline.
52:46 Speaker 01 They have talked a lot about Black history at Langston Golf Course. And they have hired an architect, Beau Welling, to work on that golf course. They knew what they were going to do with Rock Creek Park, and DC residents knew what was going to happen with that golf course as well. With the termination of the lease, it's become really unclear what's happening with those two golf courses. And I think that itself is a source of anxiety and sort of causes you to go to the worst possible outcome.
53:21 Pablo Torre? Yeah, what I'm finding out near the end here is that they're not just burying the real story of what's happening at East Potomac. They're burying even more worryingly what's gonna happen to these two other historical sites. And the person who is as anxious as anybody, it turns out, is the guy we've been talking to.
53:41 Speaker 05 Langston holds a special place in the city. It's a special place to that community. And I say all the time, I don't have the vocabulary to do Langston justice. You'll have to go see it for yourself. You can go there on a Sunday afternoon when the commanders are playing, and every table in the clubhouse is filled. You're gonna see kids running around. You can see the old timers there playing cards. And it's their community space. And it's so important to honor that history. And we're proud to have been stewards of that history. Me personally, as a Black PGA professional, it means a lot. Langston is a special, special...
54:18 Speaker 05 Sorry.
54:27 Speaker 05 Sorry.
54:34 Speaker 05 You know, this, this whole thing is, um,
54:39 Speaker 05 you try to process everything that's going on and submits too early, you're just trying to understand why, and none of it makes any sense. And
54:50 Speaker 05 the things we care about,
54:54 Speaker 05 I don't think anybody else is gonna care about. And it's, um, you know, upsetting to, to see what the, what the future could look like for these facilities.
55:05 Speaker 05 And, um,
55:08 Speaker 05 yeah, it's, it's really upsetting. I'm sorry. I just, it's sad to see.
55:19 Pablo Torre? I'm reminded of this, uh, exhortation, Garrett, you know, how a lot of people just want, want us, want sports media people to stick to sports. And then I'm listening to Damian Cosby, and it just seems like he would love to do that, actually. He would love to just tend to these, these heirlooms that his city and his community have passed down to be protected, so that they can be accessed by the public, by the American people, in a city that is currently standing for something like the opposite.
56:00 Speaker 01 What I've realized recently is that courses like East Potomac, Rock Creek, and Langston are so part of their communities that inevitably, politics is going to happen on them. They will become engaged in this tug of war of politics in some way or another, because life has lived on them. These places are important to people. They're key assets to their communities. They're valuable culturally, but also economically. Now, I know a lot of the people who work for the National Links Trust. I can assure you that they're not political people.
56:43 Speaker 01 They might be political in their private lives, but not in their public lives. These are not government bureaucrats running the NLT. These are golf people. They like golf. That is how they want to affect the world, by providing affordable golf for people who want it.
57:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah. Garrett Morrison, thank you for sifting through all this dirt and finding somewhere buried underneath it, the public interest.
57:11 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me, Pablo.
57:22 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.
57:56 Pablo Torre? Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.
58:29 Speaker 02 With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.
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