President Trump selected ‘American Flag blue’ to paint the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a White House spokesperson said

Donald Trump used a government exemption to give a $6.9 million no-bid contract to his “pool guy” to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to an ocean-blue color after complaining it “never looked great.”

The exemption is typically reserved for urgent situations to prevent “serious injury, financial or other, to the government”, according to documents reviewed in an exclusive report by The New York Times.

But Trump used the exemption to get the company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to quickly begin work on the memorial as part of an array of building projects and refurbishments taking place across Washington D.C. ahead of America’s 250th birthday this year.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    60·
    4 days ago

    “As a developer, I’ve probably built more than 100 swimming pools, different buildings. I built, and I have some really good pool builders … but over the years, I’ve had three or four really good ones,” he said.

    Trump went on about how a “friend” from Germany had similarly knocked the landmark’s condition as “filthy, disgusting,”

    I mean, it’s not a swimming pool. Like, it doesn’t need to be free of algae and it’s not full of disinfecting chlorine.

    Like, you wouldn’t point at a lake and say “eww, gross, it’s full of living things and dirt”.

    EDIT: Okay, upon further reading, maybe he does think that it’s intended for swimming or wants it to be used for that.

    https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/04/donald-trump-reflecting-pool/89926382007/

    President Donald Trump posted an apparently artificially generated image of himself with members of his Cabinet swimming in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

    Late on May 1, Trump posted a fake image of himself, shirtless, giving a thumbs up as he lounges in the pool with other Cabinet members in their swimsuits.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      2 days ago

      Also, as if “more than 100” swimming pools is supposed to be a lot when you’re talking about a project of this scale and purported significance.

    • ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      It does need to be algae free, and to that end the water is pumped with ozone rather than chlorine. The last rebuild, during Obama, needed a full draining soon after recommissining to clear out the algae again, at some cost. They since ramped up the ozone levels to kill anything in the pool.