Size matters to President Donald Trump.
That’s apparently why he bizarrely upended the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a Truth Social measurement graph, so that he could compare it to... skyscrapers—the structures that live in the minds of high-rise real estate developers like Trump.
The 79-year-old president gloated in a Saturday Truth Social post that the reflecting pool is 2,030 feet “high” (actually long), compared to the mere 1,451-foot-high Sears Tower in Chicago, and Manhattan’s 1,454-foot Empire State Building and 1,776-foot One World Trade Center.
The structures aren’t in any way similar to the Washington D.C. pool in either material or height. Yet Trump gushed in his post: “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.”
The iconic, century-old pool has been the focal point of such historic gatherings as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and numerous Vietnam War protests.
Trump initially said in April that he was simply going to have the bottom of the pool painted blue. He’s now suddenly planning to “do a much higher level of repair, using industrial strength materials, which will give a longer life and a better look!” he noted in his post.
In a later message, he emphasized that he had changed the scope of the plan for “purposes of beauty.”
Trump claimed the work will cost a “fraction” of what former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden agreed to pay to overhaul the structure during their administrations—“unsuccessfully,” according to the president.
However, Trump did not specify the expected price tag, but he insisted it is “ahead of schedule” and should be completed in time for July 4th. The president did not obtain any approvals for the work; he skirted the usual approval process by claiming the work was “urgent.”
Though he initially claimed the project would cost $2 million, Trump awarded a hefty $13.1 million no-bid contract to the New Canton, Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which had never held a federal contract, according to records. The president claimed the company had worked on the pool at his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, though the company website doesn’t mention any pool work.
On Monday, the president changed his story. In a furious Truth Social post, he insisted that the contract was handed out by the Interior Department and that he did “not know” and had “never used” the contractor. The work is reportedly already riddled with issues.
As for size, Trump knows all about that. He inflated the number of actual floors in Trump Tower from 58 to 68 when he constructed the skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. He initially claimed that the building lobby alone was equivalent to 30 stories.
