Trump's Other Paint Job
Before the Reflecting Pool turned blue, the president tried to paint the border wall black. His own engineers told him it was a bad idea. He did it anyway, and the story of how it happened reveals everything about how power works in the second term.
There is a pattern hiding in plain sight inside the Trump administration's relationship with federal property, and it runs from the southern border to the National Mall.
Halfway through his first term, Donald Trump ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection to paint the border wall black. Not a symbolic gesture. Not a prototype. Hundreds of miles of steel barriers, coated in what the president called "flat black, " a specific shade he believed would superheat the metal and deter migrants from attempting to climb it. Trump had a story he told repeatedly to make the case: golfing buddies had scalded their arms on a black-granite countertop he installed at the snack bar of one of his clubs. He applied that logic to the southern border of the United States.