We drove Trump’s D.C. Turns out, he may not be seeing much.

By Kara Voght, Hannah Dormido, John Farrell and Salwan Georges
August 16, 2025 at 10:55 a.m. EDT Yesterday at 10:55 a.m. EDT

What is it about the streets of Washington that irks the president so much? … “Violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said during a news conference on Monday. There’s “graffiti all over the walls” and “potholes in the roads,” not to mention the medians — “they’re always broken, bad, but here they’re really bad.” … The basis of those assertions appears to be secondhand. The president primarily sees Washington from the back of his armored limousine, nicknamed “The Beast,” and what he’s seen through its tinted windows has inspired his federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement, according to a White House official.

The presidential motorcade has left the White House fewer than 50 times since Inauguration Day, traveling to just a dozen places within D.C. city limits, The Washington Post found. … The Post analyzed more than 2,500 pool reports, the routine dispatches from White House reporters who travel with the president almost everywhere. They show that Trump has been to the U.S. Capitol on five occasions. He’s gone to the Kennedy Center three times. And he’s stopped by a few federal agencies, all less than a mile from the White House grounds. For security reasons, the White House does not provide the president’s routes.

On two recent mornings, a team of Post reporters retraced some of the president’s likely routes with the goal of seeing Trump’s view of Washington firsthand. We found that Trump’s movements have generally been confined to a small, picturesque pocket of the 61-square-mile city, mainly featuring the neoclassical architecture and grassy expanses found on postcards.

The place Trump has traveled to by motorcade the most is his golf course in Virginia — more than a dozen times since January. That trip would generally take him past monuments along the National Mall before crossing the Potomac River and heading onto highways for the rest of the 26-mile drive.

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About this story
Reporting by Kara Voght and Hannah Dormido. Video by John Farrell. Photography by Salwan Georges. Design development by Carson TerBush. Tim Meko contributed to this report.

Kara Voght
Kara Voght is a politics reporter for the Style section at The Washington Post, writing features and profiles that capture the political moment. She grew up in Eastern Connecticut and lives in Washington.@karavoght
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Hannah Dormido
Hannah Dormido is a graphics reporter and cartographer at The Washington Post, focusing on national and politics. Before joining The Post, she worked as a data visualization journalist at Bloomberg News and has led the Asia graphics team at the Financial Times.@hannahdormido
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John Farrell
John Farrell is the video editor for the Climate & Weather team.@jafarrell17
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Salwan Georges
Salwan Georges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist covering news nationally and internationally for The Washington Post. In 2021, Georges was named Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International. In 2023, he was named Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association.@salwangeorges
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