According to a report from CNN, serious security upgrades were required at the White House before Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, but he left them for his successor Joe Biden when he assumed the Oval Office because the former president and his wife Melania didn’t want to deal with the mess and inconvenience of construction.
Facing security threats against the White House — and prior to the invasion of the Capitol building on Jan 6th by far-right insurrectionists — the Secret Service recommended improvements on the grounds that included “substantial upgrades to its future security apparatus, updates that would include digging deeply and extensively, from the upper main driveway to the lower, across acres of pristine green grass.”
With the Secret Service working in tandem with the National Park Service to put together a plan for the multimillion-dollar overhaul, it was left to Trump to give the go-ahead with the assurance it would be done in phases to avoid a massive upheaval on the grounds. Continue reading.