President Donald Trump talks while holding up renderings of the planned White House ballroom, aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, March 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
President Donald Trump has one sneaky trick to make his hugely unpopular Washington D.C., renovation plans move along quickly, but according to a new report from MS NOW, it also makes them "more corrupt" than most people realize.
Writing for the network on Thursday morning, reporter Hayes Brown explained how the Trump administration has used numerous no-bid contracts to "emphasize speed over cost reductions" as it aimed to have certain projects ready in time for the country's 250th anniversary this summer. One of the most prominent new projects using this method is Trump's plan to redo the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial, changing the water to a color he claimed to be "American Flag Blue."
"At any given time, his attention will drift back to the construction of his White House ballroom or any number of other side projects that would be more fittingly found on HGTV than C-Span," Brown observed. "Unlike reality TV, where corporate sponsorships are the norm and cash prizes come with plenty of strings, Trump’s current beautification kick only keeps growing more corrupt as he acts as though the White House — and Washington more broadly — is his personal fiefdom to do with as he pleases."
No-bid contracts refer to a situation in which the government opts to directly award a project to a certain company or contractor without any sort of competitive bidding process, as has been standard practice over the years. As Brown noted, these types of contracts "are only meant to be deployed in instances where taking the time to go through the normal process would provide a serious injury to the government."
Besides simply speeding up the contracting process, critics have also accused the administration of using no-bids to give corrupt preferential treatment to friendly companies, while also potentially overspending taxpayer dollars to a major degree.
When grilled about this by Congress, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued that no-bid contracts had secured "a record amount of deferred maintenance” for “19 fountains across the city that didn’t work.” Brown noted that he appeared to be "getting his wires crossed," as those fountains were part of "a different sketchy no-bid contract" situation than the Reflecting Pool, though he argued that both situations presented no sign of potential "injury" to the government if a speedier process was not used, only to Trump;s ego.
"In both cases, however, the only 'injury' in question was apparently the risk of hurting Trump’s feelings that the projects wouldn’t be done in time for the 250th birthday bash he wants to throw the country," Brown wrote. "The casual dismissal of federal contracting rules foreshadows a future reckoning with how much taxpayer money is being spent — and potentially wasted — on these vanity projects."