President Donald Trump has provided a strange description of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as he continues to defend his failed renovation plan.
Trump, 80, grumbled Monday about the troubled National Mall site and its supposed knife-wielding vandals, whose existence he has not been able to prove. In fact, internal National Park Service records show that damage to the pool was unrelated to the “American flag blue” coating the president wanted applied, and experts have invalidated the vandal theory. Now, the pool is once more without water, as federal employees inspect its issues.
During his speech in Michigan, Trump, after being heckled about Jeffrey Epstein, talked about the immovable, inanimate object as if it were a living thing, saying it was “in the hospital.”
“The beautiful reflecting pond,” he began, yet again wrongly calling the site a “pond.”
“Somebody comes along and starts cutting it with a knife, these sick—they’re sick!“ he said. ”It’s—but it’s—it’s in the hospital now, but it’s going to get better very soon. It’s almost ready to open. We could have kept it that way for a while, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to get—I wanted to have it fixed perfectly. But these people are very terrible."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when the pool would reopen.
The botched renovation by the no-bid contractor the Trump administration chose has so far cost $17 million. The New York Times reported in May that $7 million in national park entrance fees was being allocated for the project.
The reflecting pool was filled in time for the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations earlier this month, but an algae problem, dead ducklings, and peeling paint required it to be drained yet again.
The reflecting pool is one of Trump’s pet projects—along with the White House ballroom and the triumphal arch in Arlington, Virginia—that Americans generally don’t support.
According to a Washington Post/Ipsos survey conducted this month, 65 percent of Americans held negative views of those projects, while only 32 percent approved.
Trump talked Wednesday about making Washington, D.C. “beautiful,” but poll respondents were skeptical that that was his true motivation.
More than half—51 percent—said he had a “different goal” in mind, while 26 percent agreed that Trump wants to “make Washington more beautiful.”
