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Trump Participates in a Rose Garden Dinner with Hunters, Fishers, and Outdoorsmen, Sep. 17, 2026

September 17, 2026 · The White House · 0:17:55

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump hosted a dinner in the Rose Garden on September 17, 2026, for “our great hunters, fishers, and outdoorsmen,” in an event carried on the White House channel. Much of his welcome was a tour of the rebuilt White House itself: the resurfaced Rose Garden, where guests once “sunk about six inches into the ground” in mud; the new helipad of granite “6 in thick, carved with a beautiful eagle,” built because the new helicopters “rip the grass out”; and an invitation to walk through the Oval Office afterward. He said the White House exterior had been restored from a state where moldings had been “falling off the building for 24, 25 years in some cases,” and that it was now “in better shape now than when they built it in 1792.”

Turning to his guests’ world, he thanked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — “he’s doing a great job” — and credited him with restoring “82 statues, monuments, fountains” across Washington that had been neglected for 40 to 70 years: “They had graffiti stained. They had grass growing through the cracks… Now they’re beautiful.” He also thanked Representatives Addison McDowell, August Pfluger, and Bruce Westerman.

Why it matters

The outdoors constituency and the public lands it uses are the constituency side of Secretary Burgum’s Interior portfolio, and this dinner is the President making that connection in person — with the monument-restoration figure, 82, stated on the record as the department’s scoreboard-ready claim.

Scoreboard watch

This dinner carries a candidate figure for the scoreboard: the 82 statues, monuments, and fountains the President credits Secretary Burgum’s Interior Department with restoring across Washington, D.C.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Rose Garden Dinner, Sep. 17, 2026” (official upload, embedded above; the upload’s description places the dinner at the White House). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the dinner.