President Donald Trump has announced his latest renovation undertaking. He say the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall is in the process of being upgraded.
He told reporters on Thursday the renovation was inspired by a visit from a friend from Germany, who said the pool was “filthy dirty.” Trump said he and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum went and checked it out and decided upgrades were needed.
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How much will it cost?
According to the president, one contractor proposed removing the pool’s granite and replacing it with stone as part of a three-year renovation that would cost $300 million dollars, but he got a better deal.
“I said, ‘No, there’s a better way of doing it.’ I said, ‘What we’re gonna do is I’m gonna call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past doing swimming pools’ — that’s all they can do is a swimming pool — and I said, ‘Give me a good price.’ ‘We can do it for maybe a million and a half to two million dollars,’ as opposed to $300 million,” Trump described.
The project is already underway with plans to coat the pool, which Trump described as “leaking like a sieve,” with an industrial-grade finish in a color he calls “American Flag Blue.”
Updating another landmark
The reflecting pool is a national landmark known for historic moments, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It stretches more than 2,000 feet and was built in 1922.
Trump says crews have already cleaned and re-grouted the original granite. He says once finished, the new coating could last 40 to 50 years without leaks.
This is just the latest renovation the president has planned since re-taking office in January 2025. He has already torn down the White House’s East Wing to make way for a ballroom, added what he calls “Trump touches” to the Oval Office (gold accents everywhere), paving over the Rose Garden, and adding a “Presidential Walk of Fame” to the West Wing.
He has also announced plans for overhauling the Kennedy Center, building a massive triumphal arch in Washington, D.C., and painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building white.
He has also reportedly proposed renaming national landmarks after himself.
Trump already did so with the Kennedy Center, which is now officially titled the “Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
