One of the frustrating aspects about trying to write about the Trump administration — actually one of the less frustrating aspects all things considered, but still pretty frustrating — is what in olden times used to be called Kremlinology: deciphering what the nation’s leader actually means by parsing every nuance of what he says. So I’ve been avoiding weighing in on the “Will Donald Trump intervene in the Washington Commanders stadium situation question?” until more facts are in, but it looks like we’re unlikely to get any, so away we go:
As covered last week, D.C. council president Phil Mendelson said he heard that Commanders owner Josh Harris had a “Plan B” for expediting approval of his proposed $7 billion–plus stadium subsidy, and that was to get Trump and/or Congress involved somehow. Once that was out in the journosphere, someone asked Trump about it over the weekend, and he answered, sort of:
“It’s a very important piece of property; it’s a great piece of property,” he said. “So, we’ll see. But if I can help them out, I will. You know, ultimately, we control that; the federal government ultimately controls it. So, we’ll see what happens.”
On Tuesday, Trump added some more:
“We could run DC. I mean, we’re looking at DC,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting Tuesday, where he was holding court at length in front of cameras. “We’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want a capital that’s run flawlessly.”
Divining what’s going on in Trump’s head from this, let alone what he’s actually likely to do, is pretty much impossible. The federal government “ultimately controls” D.C.’s budget, but 1) that’s Congress, not the White House, and 2) unless I’m mistaken, even Congress doesn’t have the power to pass its own spending bills for D.C., only to approve or block the city’s own budget measures. And Trump’s second statement appears to have been about combatting crime, not building a football stadium, if it can be said to be “about” anything at all other than pwning a Democratic city leadership.
It is true that Harris has been an informal Trump advisor as well as recently giving the president a custom jersey and calling him “the ultimate Commander,” which is a proven way to get on his good side. It’s not clear what Trump can do to force the D.C. council to pass a stadium bill this month rather than putting it off until the fall, though: Threaten to cut even more of the city’s funding than he already has? Abduct Mendelson and send him to El Salvador? It’s not like there’s even $7 billion in the D.C. budget that he could try to expropriate and give to Harris — the money being promised is mostly in the form of an insanely sweetheart lease deal on federal land controlled by D.C. — though that’s not to say he won’t try issuing an executive order insisting that it happen anyway.
Bowser chimed in this week with her own vague intimations, replying to a question about House oversight committee chair James Comer, who pushed through the legislation that transferred the RFK stadium site to D.C.’s control: “He authored the legislation, spearheaded through the Congress, helped with it in the Senate, and I don’t think he’s willing to see it die at the Council of the District of Columbia.” Implying … what exactly? That Congress could try to repeal that legislation and then give the land to Harris itself? That Bowser is just invoking the name of a Congressperson and warning the council, “Don’t make Comer come in there?”
Most of this is almost certainly just politicians answering questions posed to them by the media with tough-sounding talk, so it’s unlikely there’s some grand scheme at work here. It is true, though, that Harris and Bowser desperately want to get this stadium deal finalized before anyone starts asking too many questions, so if vague threats can serve as a two-minute warning to make the council feel some urgency, no harm in throwing some out there. We may know more as Harris and Bowser’s self-imposed July 15 deadline for council action approaches, but it’s impossible to predict without a much more robust Kremlin-to-English dictionary,