Trump Wants to Kill Another Beloved D.C. Public Space. I Suspect I Know Why.

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The first time I went to East Potomac Golf Course, in D.C., it was immediately clear that this was the opposite of country club golf. This was in August 2018, my second year living in the city, and I had played most of my golf in the Montgomery County suburbs, where the courses were in nicer condition. East Potomac, which sits on a little human-made island across from the city’s Southwest Waterfront, didn’t have spotless fairways or perfectly mown rough. It did have three things that were hard to find in the same place: an extremely low price point, a perfect view of the Washington Monument that stared you down as you played back toward the clubhouse, and a melting pot of both race and skill level. Many of the players weren’t white, and a lot of them had clearly just started playing. The round probably took five hours. My receipt says it cost $35. The snack bar was full of kids who were hitting at the on-site driving range. People who didn’t look dressed for golf sat on Adirondack chairs by the practice green.

Donald Trump has announced that this golf course will close on Nov. 15—not to give the space to something other than golf, but to give it to a much different kind of golf.

Golf has a reputation problem. There is nothing racist, classist, selfish, or otherwise exclusionary about hitting a ball around a field for a few hours and enjoying the attendant walk. But men like Trump have worked hard to tie up golf with those traits. He’s said it himself before, telling Golf Digest in 2014: “I would make golf aspirational, instead of trying to bring everybody into golf, people that are never gonna be able to be there anyway. You know, they’re working so hard to make golf, as they say, a game of the people. And I think golf should be a game that the people want to aspire to through success.” If that weren’t clear, he added, the next year, “Let golf be elitist.” There is no person in the world who has committed themself more to an exclusive class of golf than the president. Trump’s courses are all either private clubs with five-to-six-figure initiation fees or “public” courses that typically cost hundreds per round.

Go through a checklist of what East Potomac is, and you can see how Trump’s desire to replace it with a new golf course began. A nonprofit group of golf lovers, the National Links Trust, runs the course (and two others in D.C.). It is not designed to make money for anyone. It is not a monument to him, personally, like his own tracks are. It is perfectly nice but not in pristine condition most of the time, so it doesn’t make for a great showpiece. It costs $42 to walk the course on a weekday, and this course hosts more rounds than any other in the area. (That is the operator’s claim, but no other course around D.C. could possibly come close.) Bikers, runners, and a miniature golf course surround the property.

To get a different course onto its land, the president is determined to make a public park less useful for the people of D.C. and the nation.

The second Trump administration has contorted itself to find a way to end East Potomac and build something else in its place. Government lawyers have made farcical arguments that the course’s operators have violated their lease terms. Trump toured the grounds in June with famed golf course designer Tom Fazio, who seems poised to build a course that would cater to highly skilled players. In fall 2025, the administration dumped contaminated dirt from his ballroom project on the East Potomac grounds. The president now calls the course “unsafe.” National Park Service crews cut down 430 trees on the property earlier this month, in the middle of a legal battle over the site’s future. The government said that was “tree management” and not part of a renovation plan. A Justice Department lawyer said Monday there wasn’t a final plan for what the site will become. That is news to Trump, who is clear that he wants to build a “championship” course that could host major tour events. The administration first accused the current course management of violating its lease terms, then made a deal with the group that would allow it to continue running the course as long as the president gets to rebuild the place in his image.

What will come next will be a more expensive, smaller, and duller golf course that serves fewer people. Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum said in the spring that locals would get “affordable, highly discounted rates,” but Trump promises no such things and says only that the course will be “open to the Public.” Burgum compares the future course to Bethpage Black, in New York, which costs $65 to $70 for residents and much more for visitors. (That’s much more expensive than East Potomac is now.) Trump is showcasing a plan that will turn a 36-hole property with three courses into a single 18-hole course, meaning thousands fewer people will be able to play there each year. Trump is undoubtedly thrilled to ditch the nine-hole courses, which serve as a golf on-ramp for people unlikely to play a full 18.

In 1897 Congress set aside this land to be “forever held and used as a park for the recreation and pleasure of the people.” If you think all golf is a waste of land and water (fair enough, though I think you should try it sometime), this project is still an affront to you. The plan Trump shared suggests that the renovation will eliminate the road and path that loop around the current course. If so, several races, including the beloved Cherry Blossom 10-Miler every spring, will need to find new routes. It appears that the 12^th hole of the new course will take out a picnic area with a playground. The best hope is that Trump’s functionaries are just sharing terrible A.I. maps and will be slightly less destructive in practice.

The elimination of East Potomac represents a grand bargain between Trump and the city he will soon have lived in for eight years. Trump gets a legacy piece that may (or may not) one day host big, important golf tournaments but will go down as another big piece of the capital that he transformed. In return, D.C. residents get to stay in their houses more as the president shrinks a sprawling green space and makes it exponentially more expensive. Thank heavens, because the region doesn’t have enough expensive golf already. In 2016 Washingtonian reported that Trump’s Northern Virginia club had a $100,000 cost to join. That would buy someone about 2,100 rounds at East Potomac. But the kinds of people who would pay that small price to enjoy a nice day of D.C. golf are not the ones the president cares about.