President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has taken another turn for the worse.
Trump, 80, had spent months bragging about repainting the massive pool on the National Mall a specifically chosen shade of “American flag blue.” But less than 24 hours after his vanity project was completed at a cost of more than $14 million, the pool turned green with algae.
Now, a fresh issue has surfaced: Trump’s “American flag blue” finish is flaking off and floating to the surface.
Visitors at the National Mall have been taking home large sheets of the blue coating as souvenirs, HuffPost reports.
Trump had intended for the coating to change the pool’s longtime gray hue to a swimming-pool-like blue, while also acting as a sealant for the structure, which leaks millions of gallons of water a year.
“This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years, applied by very talented people, many of whom came from the Great State of Oklahoma, where I won 77 out of 77 Counties, THREE TIMES, the only President to ever do so,” he wrote in a Truth Social post earlier this month. “The material is thick, strong, flexible, and has a natural, beautiful color, the dark blue of the American Flag!”
The president, a former real estate developer, had initially estimated that the pool renovations would cost $1.8 million. Instead, it has emerged that the firm that handled the project was paid $13.1 million—more than seven times Trump’s original estimate.
Federal documents obtained by The New York Times also revealed that the Virginia-based firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, charged the government a whopping 20 percent for profit—even though similar federal construction contracts typically come with profit margins between 6 and 12 percent.
Despite the extraordinarily steep costs, the federal government approved the contract, sidestepping requirements to consider competing offers.
Trump told reporters in late April that he had chosen the firm himself because it had worked on the swimming pool at his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, saying, “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools.”
He later walked his claim back, writing on Truth Social, “I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before.”
Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government has been scrambling to clean up the pool’s algal mess, with workers being deployed to vacuum algae from the pool and disperse hydrogen peroxide into the water.
The algal bloom has become one of the worst outbreaks this decade. A Washington Post analysis found that the reflecting pool contains more algae than at any point recorded in June over the past five years. The study also reported that algae levels were among the highest seen in any month over the last two years.
When reached for comment on the peeling sheets of paint, the White House declined to address the issue directly, instead pointing to what it described as progress in killing the algae.
“Thanks to President Trump, new lining and industrial grade materials will permanently seal the Reflecting Pool, which previously leaked 16 million gallons per year and wasted countless taxpayer dollars,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Beast in a statement. “Now, under regular NPS maintenance, high-tech nanobubble ozone technology is being deployed to kill the algae and keep the Reflecting Pool crystal clear.”
The White House also referred the Beast to a Interior Department X post declaring, “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
