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Just a month out from America’s celebration of its 250th birthday, the national capital is a mess.

And I’m talking about the sites central to the pilgrimages that millions of Americans make each year to Washington, especially the White House. The once-verdant park remains a construction site, with makeshift fencing only partly obscuring the vast scar that was once the East Wing and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. Cranes sway in place of the felled trees, to build President Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom despite court orders and overwhelming public opinion against it. The South Lawn has been replaced with a gargantuan circus-tent-like arena for Ultimate Fighting Championship cage matches and a Trump-picked audience of thousands. Yes, cage matches. To mark not the nation’s birthday but the president’s 80th on June 14.

Because it’s all about Trump.

Nearby, the Reflecting Pool sweeping from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial and Washington Monument remains dry, its water replaced with crews painting the basin “American Flag Blue” — another Trump vanity project that’s millions over budget and behind schedule. Cross over Independence Avenue and the grounds near the Martin Luther King Jr. and Jefferson Memorials are also fenced off, obscuring more construction-related structures for Trump’s unauthorized, possibly illegal “National Garden of American Heroes” for 250 statues of folks as varied as John Adams and Kobe Bryant. Another jarring sight: National Guard troops still needlessly patrol the........

© Los Angeles Times