President Trump sat down in the Oval Office with Scotts Miracle-Gro's lawns research fellow Matt Koch for a half-hour discussion about replanting the White House South Lawn — and the coastal press can't stop sneering about it.
Both Fortune and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran the same AP-dictated framing: Trump has a "grass obsession." Fortune headlined it that way outright. The AJC went with "goes into the weeds." The shared subtext is clear — a president talking about lawns must be unserious, maybe even unhinged.
But strip away the snark and here's what happened: an American president invited an American company to the White House to talk about something American homeowners spend billions on every year — their yards. Scotts Miracle-Gro, headquartered in Marysville, Ohio, employs thousands of working Americans who make a living off the green industry. That's a real business, serving real customers, and it just got a seat at the table.
Koch, who calls himself a "grass nerd," came away impressed. "An amazing dialogue, talking grass for half an hour," he said, according to Fortune. "Going back and forth about grass."
Trump's interest isn't exactly new. He's mentioned grass at least 45 times in public events over 18 months — once every 12 days, per both outlets' count. That outpaces his entire first term, when he brought it up 26 times over four years. His explanation is straightforward: "I know a lot about grass because I own a lot of golf courses," he said while announcing Kennedy Center Honors recipients last August. "And if you don't have good grass, you're not in business very long." A week later, visiting park police, he declared: "I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world."
The press wants you to laugh at that. Both outlets note he's brought up grass at events where it seems off-topic — a Diwali celebration, a turkey pardoning, a quantum technology directive, the World Economic Forum in Davos. Fortune pointedly notes he's spent "more time talking about it than the war in Iran, the economy or November's midterm elections" at some events.
Here's what both outlets bury: Trump's grass talk is usually tied to his push to fix up Washington, D.C. — the fountains, the monuments, the parks. Last September, hosting Republican lawmakers for dinner, he pledged to "re-grass them with the best guys in the country." In May, he spent 10 minutes of a Cabinet meeting on fountain repairs and a D.C. facelift. The AJC concedes this sounds "more like a small-town mayor than the leader of the free world" — which is exactly the point. A president who talks like a mayor about the condition of public spaces is a president thinking about the places people actually live and walk, not just the abstractions that fill cable news.
The White House declined to comment on the summit. Trump has also detailed plans to pave over portions of the White House lawn for new construction, telling The Spectator: "Some people would like to leave it. But the problem is, you can't."
So which is it — a president who cares about grass, or a president who cares about building? Maybe both. The question the press won't ask is why a half-hour meeting between a president and an Ohio company about American lawns strikes them as more ridiculous than the permanent lobbying class that usually fills those chairs.
