Last April, before he trashed France on the anniversary of the Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people, Donald and Melania Trump took French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, on a guided tour of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia estate, led by Mount Vernon C.E.O. Doug Bradburn. Because he has the attention span of a gnat, the property was lacking in large shiny objects, and the conversation was about someone other than himself, Trump was, unsurprisingly, bored out of his skull, according to a new report from Politico. “Desperate” to get the 45th president excited about Washington’s house, and probably fearing Trump was two seconds away from abandoning ship to catch reruns of Hannity, Bradburn decided to shift the focus from historical details about the centuries-old compound to a topic Trump might actually be interested in: real-estate tycoons.

A former history professor with a PhD, Bradburn . . . spoke in terms Trump understands best—telling the president that Washington was an 18th-century real-estate titan who had acquired property throughout Virginia and what would come to be known as Washington, D.C.

Trump asked whether Washington was “really rich,” according to a second person familiar with the visit. In fact, Washington was either the wealthiest or among the wealthiest Americans of his time, thanks largely to his mini real-estate empire.

This got Trump excited, but he reportedly worried Washington had made a rookie mistake that could’ve been prevented had the Queens-born real-estate developer been around to provide counsel. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.” Of course, as Bradburn pointed out, that may not be an issue given that the nation’s capital bears Washington’s name, as do an entire state, the Washington Monument, at least half a dozen colleges and universities, and the $1 bill. Trump reportedly conceded this point, though he still had further constructive criticism to offer the first president:

If Trump was impressed with Washington’s real-estate instincts, he was less taken by Mount Vernon itself, which the first president personally expanded from a modest one-and-a-half-story home into an 11,000-square-foot mansion. The rooms, Trump said, were too small, the staircases too narrow, and he even spotted some unevenness in the floorboards, according to four sources briefed on his comments. He could have built the place better, he said, and for less money.

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