Trump inaugurates new White House helipad, but networks skip coverage during First Amendment fight

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump showed off his new White House he­li­copter land­ing pad on Mon­day, at­tempt­ing to brush aside a First Amend­ment firestorm even as ma­jor tele­vi­sion net­works kept their cam­eras away in protest of CNN be­ing banned from the grounds.

A light driz­zle fell on the South Lawn as Trump used over­sized gold scis­sors to cut a red, white and blue rib­bon. He then ex­changed hand­shakes with of­fi­cials and with some mem­bers of a con­struc­tion crew wear­ing green smocks and hard­hats — seek­ing to por­tray busi­ness as usu­al.

If he had words to mark the oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, it was im­pos­si­ble to hear them over the noise of his wait­ing he­li­copter. Nor­mal­ly, TV net­work crews work to cap­ture clear­er au­dio.

Trump al­so didn’t an­swer re­porters’ shout­ed ques­tions be­fore climb­ing aboard Ma­rine One for an even­tu­al flight to New York. In­stead, he wrote on his so­cial me­dia site, “We are just leav­ing the White House Lawn on the maid­en voy­age from the new­ly built, and very beau­ti­ful, He­li­port!”

MS Now, Politi­co and CNN have sued af­ter Trump an­nounced Fri­day that he was ban­ning them from cov­er­ing the White House in a clear es­ca­la­tion of Trump’s long-run­ning ef­forts — in the courts and through ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tion — to re­strict news cov­er­age he finds ob­jec­tion­able.

CNN nor­mal­ly par­tic­i­pates in a five-net­work ro­ta­tion that pro­vides pooled footage of dai­ly events at the White House. When the net­work was barred from tak­ing its as­signed turn on Mon­day, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News agreed col­lec­tive­ly to the ex­tra­or­di­nary step of skip­ping Trump’s he­li­pad cer­e­mo­ny.

Trump has long crowed about how the new he­li­pad — fea­tur­ing ex­ten­sive gran­ite that he boasts will have a “mil­lion-year life,” as well as a large in­signia read­ing the “Seal of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States” — would im­press Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, who ar­rives Wednes­day for a state vis­it.

He’s been fo­cused on wow­ing Xi even as he de­cried De­moc­rats as com­mu­nists in an at­tempt to help Re­pub­li­cans re­tain con­trol of Con­gress in up­com­ing midterm elec­tions. But his ef­fort to curb ac­cess for me­dia out­lets to the White House has over­shad­owed Trump’s pet build­ing projects and Xi’s vis­it.

Ig­nit­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions over me­dia ac­cess al­so eclipsed the rea­son Trump was lift­ing off from the he­li­pad — the an­nu­al trip to at­tend the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly be­gin­ning on Tues­day.

The pres­i­dent has spent large swaths of his sec­ond term fo­cused on build­ing projects even as his ad­min­is­tra­tion strug­gles to find a way out of the on­go­ing war in Iran. Trump’s ap­proval rat­ings have sunk with on­ly about six weeks be­fore Elec­tion Day, where vot­ers are in­creas­ing­ly wor­ried about in­fla­tion and a po­ten­tial­ly weak­en­ing econ­o­my.

Whether Trump’s work will be long-last­ing is un­clear

Trump has made grand claims about the gran­ite’s longevi­ty. He ear­li­er sug­gest­ed that his re­fur­bish­ing of the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al’s Re­flect­ing Pool would last a cen­tu­ry — on­ly for the paint to fade and its lin­er to peel away in chunks just days af­ter it was laid.

The he­li­pad work be­gan in June. Trump al­so ripped out the orig­i­nal Ten­nessee flag­stone along the West Wing’s colon­nade and re­placed it with black gran­ite. He sim­i­lar­ly re­fur­bished the tra­di­tion­al walk­way from the White House’s diplo­mat­ic en­trance with white gran­ite, along with a por­tion of the as­phalt dri­ve­way around the South Lawn.

Trump rushed to fin­ish the project be­fore Xi ar­rives and has ar­gued that vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries will be daz­zled by the project — de­spite Ma­rine One be­ing the on­ly air­craft that lands so close to the White House.

The pres­i­dent says the im­prove­ment was re­quired since Viet­nam War-era chop­pers that long had been used as Ma­rine One are be­ing re­placed by mod­ern ones that are too pow­er­ful to land on the White House lawn with­out dam­ag­ing the lawn’s grass. Trump has spent months re­peat­ed­ly talk­ing about grass as a way to pro­mote his var­i­ous build­ing plans, even though many of the con­struc­tion projects re­quired rip­ping up turf.

Trump said in Ju­ly that the he­li­pad project would be pri­vate­ly fund­ed and es­ti­mat­ed its cost at up to $6 mil­lion. Ad­di­tion­al changes, in­clud­ing ex­ten­sive ef­forts to lev­el the ground around the he­li­pad, have made cal­cu­lat­ing the ex­act ex­pen­di­ture dif­fi­cult.

Trump rel­ish­es the role of builder-in-chief

The once sto­ried South Lawn has be­come a ma­jor con­struc­tion site this year. In June, Trump erect­ed a fight­ing cage and tem­po­rary are­na for a UFC fight mark­ing his 80th birth­day. Then, crews got down to work on the he­li­pad.

Trump says Siko­rsky Air­craft — a sub­sidiary of de­fense con­tract­ing gi­ant Lock­heed Mar­tin — would be pay­ing for the he­li­pad, since the com­pa­ny made the new­er, larg­er he­li­copters. In his on­line post, Trump thanked Lock­heed Mar­tin’s CEO.

Some of Trump’s projects have re­lied on pub­lic mon­ey, even when the pres­i­dent ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed oth­er­wise.

When crews orig­i­nal­ly de­mol­ished the White House’s East Wing to make room for Trump’s $400 mil­lion ball­room, the pres­i­dent said it would be paid for by pri­vate donors. But his ad­min­is­tra­tion lat­er sought $1 bil­lion from Con­gress to make se­cu­ri­ty im­prove­ments to the struc­ture.

WASH­ING­TON (AP)