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.
Properly emptying and refilling it would probably cost a good amount.
Labor isn’t cheap, and government contracts (hopefully) use prevailing wage, which is pretty high.
A proper contractor would clean it first, and then add several coats of a what is probably supposed to be a special type of paint. That’s pretty expensive.
In this case however, it’s a grift, so it won’t actually cost them nearly that much because that’s the point.
Didn’t the last evaluation of maintenance come in at 300k? Which included everything except the paint because it’s not meant to be that kind of pool
I don’t know, I’m not following the grift that closely