Documents show how Trump landed Lincoln Memorial for Fox News event

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/08/13/trump-lincoln-memorial-fox-town-hall/
https://archive.ph/3L19A

Documents show how Trump landed Lincoln Memorial for Fox News event
Trump’s 2020 ‘town hall’ was held inside the memorial, an area where events have long been barred by federal regulations
By Jonathan O'Connell
Updated August 13, 2022 at 4:07 p.m. EDT | Published August 13, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT


President Donald Trump speaks at the Lincoln Memorial during a Fox News virtual town hall on May 3, 2020, in Washington. The event was moderated by Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. (Evan Vucci/AP)

In the spring of 2020, National Park Service personnel were preparing for an event President Donald Trump was holding with Fox News to address the nascent covid-19 pandemic from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, site of historic protests and inaugural concerts.

But, first, they had to brief Trump on the plans.

“As of now we’re looking at an event at base of Lincoln from 6-8 or so Sunday night. No event in chamber. I will see if that holds once POTUS is briefed later today,” Jeff Reinbold, the Park Service’s superintendent for the National Mall and Memorial Parks, wrote in an April 28, 2020, email to other agency officials.

By the next morning, the virtual “town hall” was no longer to be held at the base, the documents show. Trump’s two-hour sit-down with Fox News anchors would take place inside the memorial’s main chamber, on the landing in the shadow of the marble statue of a seated Lincoln. With the exception of an annual birthday tribute to Lincoln, federal regulations bar events from being held in that area.

The email is among hundreds of pages of newly released government documents that help fill in the picture of how officials from multiple government agencies worked to engineer the event at the Lincoln, one of the many norm-defying moments of the Trump presidency. They show that the Park Service provided security personnel at a cost of nearly $150,000 and that a Secret Service official apologized to colleagues for the planning process, calling it a “$#!t show.”

After the event, officials noted that the memorial itself — then 98 years old — had sustained scratches and gouges in its pink marble floor, according to a final memorandum.

[ificandream]

1. If a Democratic president had done the same kind of thing, Fox would have screamed.

[Me.]

2. Of Course He Would Damage It

He damages everything

[no_hypocrisy]

3. They wanted to supplant the memory of Marion Anderson singing in front of

The Lincoln Memorial