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

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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 in protest of CNN being banned from the grounds.

A light drizzle fell on the South Lawn as Trump used oversized gold scissors to cut a red, white and blue ribbon. He then exchanged handshakes with officials and with some members of a construction crew wearing green smocks and hardhats — seeking to portray business as usual.

If he had words to mark the occasion, however, it was impossible to hear them over the noise of his waiting helicopter. Normally, TV network crews work to capture clearer audio.

Trump also didn't answer reporters' shouted questions before climbing aboard Marine One for an eventual flight 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 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 footage of daily events at the White House. When the network was barred from taking its assigned turn on Monday, ABC, CBS, NBC 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 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 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.

Igniting constitutional questions over media access also eclipsed the reason Trump was lifting off from the helipad — the annual trip to attend the United Nations General Assembly beginning on Tuesday.

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. Trump's approval ratings have sunk with only about six weeks before Election Day, where voters are increasingly worried about inflation and a potentially weakening economy.

Trump has made grand claims about the granite's longevity. He earlier 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. He similarly refurbished the traditional walkway from the White House’s diplomatic entrance with white granite, along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn.

Trump rushed to finish the project before Xi arrives and has argued that visiting dignitaries will be dazzled by the project — despite Marine One being 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 powerful to land on the White House lawn without damaging the lawn's grass. Trump has spent months repeatedly talking about grass as a way to promote his various building plans, even though many of the construction projects required ripping up turf.

Trump said in July that the helipad project would be privately funded and estimated its cost at up to $6 million. Additional changes, including extensive efforts to level the ground around the helipad, have made calculating the exact expenditure difficult.

The once storied South Lawn has become a major construction site this year. In June, Trump erected a fighting cage and temporary arena for a UFC fight marking his 80th birthday. Then, crews got down to work on the helipad.

Trump says Sikorsky Aircraft — a subsidiary of defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin — would be paying for the helipad, since the company made the newer, larger helicopters. In his online post, Trump thanked Lockheed Martin's CEO.

Some of Trump’s projects have relied on public money, even when the president initially suggested otherwise.

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. But his administration later sought $1 billion from Congress to make security improvements to the structure.