U.S. President Donald Trump showed off his new White House helicopter landing pad, 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.
Mr. Trump didn’t answer reporters’ shouted questions before climbing aboard Marine One on his way 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 Mr. Trump’s long-running efforts – in the courts and through administrative action – to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable. Mr. He’s been focused on wowing Mr. Xi even as he decried Democrats as communists in an attempt to help Republicans retain control of Congress in upcoming midterm elections. 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. His successor in the Oval Office could move to undo much of his renovation work at the White House. And, in line with Mr. Trump’s assertions that the new helipad granite could last a million years, the president has made other grand pronouncements about his prowess with renovation projects that quickly fell flat.
Trump announced Friday (September 18, 2026) that he was banning them from covering the White House in a clear escalation of Mr. 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. Because they said they were gonna boycott me, “It’s interesting.
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 (September 23, 2026) for a state visit. But they never boycott me,” the President said, before adding, “I think that these outlets have an obligation to be fair. He said the 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.
