Donald J. Trump State Park is as ugly and dilapidated as its namesake's soul

Photo: Emily Guendelsberger/Instagram

Donald Trump isn’t just a disaster as a president—he’s also a disaster as a state park.

Donald J. Trump State Park sits in Westchester County, New York, and encompasses 436 acres of land originally purchased by Trump in the ’90s. He intended to develop it into a golf course, but couldn’t get permits from the towns in which the property sits, and thus turned around to donate the land to the state of New York in 2006, subsequently claiming a $100 million tax write-off. The park closed due to budget cuts in 2010, though it only had a $2,500 annual budget prior to that, and now sits mostly abandoned and entirely uncared for. In 2010, there was an attempt to convert at least part of the property into a dog park, but the New York State Office Of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation ran into trouble when it both had issues raising funds and discovered asbestos in at least one building on the property.

All of that decrepit shabbiness is on full display in a new series of Instagram photos from former A.V. Club Philadelphia City Editor Emily Guendelsberger, a journalist who recently snuck into a GOP retreat by posing as a congressman’s wife. Guendelsberger took a trip up to Trump State Park over the weekend and subsequently declared it an “abandoned wasteland,” posting photos of muddy fields, overgrown tennis courts, and dilapidated buildings. She also captured a picture of one of the grossest looking swimming pools known to man, and it, along with a number of Guendelsberger’s other photos, is posted below. More than anything, the pictures seem to shine a light on the fact that not everything Trump touches turns to gold.

It’s worth noting that over the years, New York state legislators have tried to have the park’s name changed to something less horrible, like Pete Seeger State Park or Peter Salem State Park, after an African-American Revolutionary War soldier who is believed by some historians to have been Muslim. Instead, it remains Donald J. Trump State Park and probably will for the foreseeable future, barring Trump’s inevitable impeachment and removal from office.

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