U.S. President Donald Trump salutes, during the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
President Donald Trump has boasted about his plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, but recent reports indicate that he is quietly backing away from his former pet project.
“It’s never been altogether clear why exactly Donald Trump began fixating on renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but like his beloved ballroom vanity project, it’s not going smoothly,” reported MS NOW’s Steve Benen on Wednesday. “The endeavor is not only facing a new lawsuit, the price tag has climbed to $13.1 million — more than seven times the original cost the president touted — as part of a no-bid contract that circumvented federal procurement laws for dubious reasons.”
Bene added, “In fact, it’s reached the point where Trump has quietly changed his story about his role in the project, in ways that suggest he would prefer to put some distance between himself and the undertaking.”
The MS NOW pundit explained that Trump previously boasted in an official White House video about how he supposedly decided to renovate the pool after saying “‘What we’re going to do is, I’m going to call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools.’ … And I said, ‘Give me a good price.’”
Trump later repeated the story, saying that he told the contractors “‘Do me a favor, fellas, go take a look at the Reflecting Pool that sits in between Lincoln and Washington, the beautiful, what should be beautiful, Reflecting Pool.’ And one of them who came back, who’s really, I would say the best, but they’re all good. He came back, he said, ‘What an exciting job, sir.’”
Yet Trump is now substituting those arguments with new claims. As CNN’s Daniel Dale reported, Trump is now claiming that he “didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Benen argued that the fact “that the president’s version of events is already evolving suggests he realizes he has a burgeoning political problem on his hands.” The reflecting pool appears to have bubbles and small holes in a layer meant to waterproof the pool, while the tinted waterproofing was applied unevenly and has caused the pool to be mottled in various different shades of blue. He also noted that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tried to claim that several fountains failing to work was a “serious injury” to the government and, as such, justified Trump awarding the contract without submitting it for bidding.
“No wonder Trump is trying to pass the buck before this mess gets messier,” Benen concluded.
In previous reporting on the reflecting pool renovations, The New York Times’ David A. Farenthold and Maxine Joselow ran a Tuesday piece arguing that “Interior Dept. staffers have raised questions about the quality and speed of the work being done to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to documents seen by the NY Times.”