President Donald Trump has bungled the name of one of his renovation obsessions, just days after his doctor declared the president had aced his most recent cognitive test.
In a cozy chat with daughter-in-law Lara Trump for Fox News, Trump explained his plans for the “reflecting pond” that lies between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
“We’re doing one that’s really interesting, the reflecting pond,” Trump tells Lara Trump, who doesn’t clarify that it’s actually called the Reflecting Pool.
“It was a disaster,” Trump continues. “Built in 1922. President Obama spent 100 million dollars and destroyed it further, and then Biden got involved and spent a lot of money and destroyed it.”
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his 5′11″ in-law as they looked out a White House window, Trump continues to ramble about the “pond.”
“I’m gonna spend a tiny fraction of that money and it should open in about a week, it was gonna take them four years to get it built and it’s going to take me about four weeks.”
He finally pauses.
After spending much of the segment nodding along, Lara Trump chimed in to say that D.C. residents were clamoring for the president to fix the pool, which she described as plagued with algal blooms and garbage.
“It was disgusting,” Trump agrees, before including a random tidbit he likes to tout about the pool. “If you lay it on its side it’s taller than any building in the world.”
According to the Skyscraper Center, there are actually three buildings taller in Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore.
Trump then returned to a familiar talking point.
“It was going to cost 400 million and take four years,” Trump continues, pushing his favorite line about his renovations to the pool.
In reality, most of what the president says about the pool is incorrect or overblown.
The Obama administration spent over $34 million on renovations to the pool during its first term. A new filtration system was installed, the pool was made shallower, and work was done to shore it up as it had begun to sink.
The Biden administration did not undertake or commit to any major renovations or work on the pool, which was cleaned annually to remove algae.
Trump’s administration was quoted $300 million and three years to replace leaking granite and refresh the pool, and the president rejected that plan in favor of his own.
The president awarded a no-bid contract to his preferred pool guys, claiming the Reflecting Pool was in such a state of disrepair that there wasn’t time to go through a proper tendering process.
He initially claimed the revamp, which includes painting the pool “American Flag Blue,” would take two weeks and cost $2 million.
Nearly four weeks later, the pool is still closed. The original $6.9 million has ballooned to more than $13 million after failed leak tests.
