Donald Trump had promised to join the National Guard troops in Washington, DC, for a late-night patrol to showcase how safe his administration has made the city. But a last-minute change of heart meant the president instead went to a US Park Police facility, where he spoke about how safe the city is now and how he plans on “re-grassing” the city parks to look more like his golf courses. Trump spoke to the press and, similar to the moment when he paved the Rose Garden, claimed he’s already receiving calls thanking him for policing in DC. According to Trump, the people calling him said they hadn’t been out at restaurants for four years and have now returned to eating out. However, The Guardian reports that restaurant reservations in the city are unusually low at this very moment. Trump: I have never received so many phone calls thanking me for what we have done in Washington, D.C., from people that haven't gone to a restaurant literally in four years pic.twitter.com/oOt0Tbsgmx— Acyn (@Acyn) August 21, 2025 Trump made the statement at the Park Police’s Anacostia station alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, AG Pam Bondi, and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum. He went on to talk about how his next steps with the capital involve improving green spaces, perhaps as a response to criticism over the entire Rose Garden fiasco. The president said, “One of the things we are going to be redoing is your parks. I’m very good at grass, because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being I think anywhere in the world.” Trump continued, “And we are going to be re-grassing all of your parks, all brand-new sprinkler systems, the best that you can buy. Just like Augusta. It’ll look like Augusta. It will look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club — that’s even better.” He used the stopover and the press conference to touch on a wide variety of tangential topics, among them his happiness over a legal victory in New York that threw out a $500 million civil fraud case. That, presumably, would free him to focus on his other legal engagement of using the vast resources of the DOJ to investigate whether DC was misreporting its crime rates. Trump’s entire reason for going after the capital’s policing was his claim that the city is “crime-ridden” — even though official statistics show DC’s crime rate is at a 30-year low. MPD has already placed an administrator on leave as they investigate whether serious crimes were in fact being miscategorized in the city. Now, having “succeeded,” he is focusing on something he insists everyone can agree on — the revitalization of green spaces in DC. Trump claimed the grass in DC died 40 years ago and vowed to hire the best in the business to reverse that. The mayor and police chief have reiterated in multiple press conferences that they plan to cooperate with the federal agencies flanking the president. But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to roll over whenever the president tries something unlawful. DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb has already taken the Justice Department to federal court once, after it attempted to take over the MPD without legal justification.