President Donald Trump hauled his top goons down for a ride across the D.C. landmark he’s drained and repainted as part of his ongoing MAGA-fication of the nation’s capital.
The president made an evening visit on Thursday to inspect a roughly $2 million resurfacing job underway at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, directing his motorcade onto the empty basin’s floor and driving across it in a photo stunt.
Trump has nicknamed the new finish “American flag blue,” a swimming-pool-style coating replacing what he calls drab gray stone. Crews have spent weeks scrubbing granite, regrouting joints, and layering on an industrial topcoat. It’s expected to be finished by the end of the month.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, border czar Tom Homan, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum accompanied the president. Burgum wore a bow tie, explaining later in an X post that the “Reflecting Pool is getting cleaned up thanks to [Trump], so I figured I should too.”
The visit comes days after vandals spray-painted a tag reading “8647,” roughly 15 by 30 feet across, inside the work zone. The number 86, which in the service industry denotes getting rid of an item, is often used by protesters to call for the removal of the 47th president.
The graffiti echoed the controversy involving former FBI Director James Comey, 65, who was indicted after posting a photo last year of seashells arranged to read “86 47” during a beach walk in North Carolina.
Trump responded to that apparent threat by posting a bizarre AI-generated image of himself and Burgum, along with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, bathing shirtless in the Reflecting Pool beside an apparently fictional woman in a bikini.
Work at the site represents only the latest part of Trump’s overhaul of D.C. He has, at the White House alone, demolished the building’s historic East Wing to make way for a gaudy new ballroom complete with an underground bunker, while paving over the Rose Garden and making updates to the Palm Room. The Oval Office and Cabinet Room have undergone similarly gilded makeovers.
Other projects include an Arc de Trump, loosely modeled on France’s Arc de Triomphe, a National Garden of American Heroes in East Potomac Park, and a major rehabilitation of Lafayette Park. Trump is also considering repainting the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building white, at a cost of $7.5 million.
The president’s political opponents accuse him of prioritizing his pet projects over key issues voters are facing ahead of the midterms, such as the spiraling cost of living.
Reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether it was appropriate to commit such focus to the Reflecting Pool, given the state of play with his war against Iran.
“Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people, not a filthy capital,” he said. “Because you can understand dirt maybe better than I can, but I don’t allow it.”
