U.S. President Donald Trump spent a Saturday afternoon, like many other Americans on a late summer day: venting about setbacks to a backyard landscaping project.

How had a gash, some 75 feet long, appeared in the limestone newly installed in his renovated Rose Garden?

Aides pulled surveillance footage and found the problem. A subcontractor lugging a large bush on a broken and wobbly steel cart was to blame. Presidential yelling ensued. The yardworker¡¯s boss was summoned, the workers publicly chewed out, the contractor barred from working at the White House again.