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

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 because CNN wasn’t allowed to cover the event.

Trump used oversized gold scissors to cut a red, white and blue ribbon. He then exchanged handshakes with officials wearing green construction smocks and hardhats — seeking to portray business as usual.

The noise of his waiting helicopter meant Trump didn’t answer shouted questions before climbing aboard Marine One for a flight to New York.

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 coverage of daily events at the White House.

When it was barred from taking its customary spot on Monday, ABC, CBS, CNN 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 the president boasts will have “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.

It has also eclipsed Trump’s plans to use the helipad to fly from the White House to Joint Base Andrews and then on to New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly beginning on Tuesday.

The president has ignited constitutional questions over media access, and spent large swaths of his presidency focused on building projects, even as the war in Iran rages and his approval ratings sinks now 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 claims about the granite’s longevity may also yet prove suspect. He long 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 and refurbished with white granite the traditional walkway from the White House’s diplomatic entrance along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn.

Trump rushed to finish the project before Xi arrives and argues that visiting dignitaries will likely be dazzled by the project — even though Marine One is 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 potent to land on the White House lawn without damaging the lawn’s grass.

Trump said in July that the helipad project would be privately funded and estimated its cost at up to $6 million. He’s also talked about making additional changes, however — including extensive efforts to level the ground around the helipad, that have made calculating the exact expenditure difficult.

Will Weissert And Seung Min Kim, The Associated Press