President Donald Trump daydreamed about his $13 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while his administration was humiliated on multiple fronts on Monday.
Trump, 79, posted a doctored side-by-side photo of the Reflecting Pool on Truth Social around 3 p.m. on Monday, comparing two identical images of the site under “Hussein Obama” and himself.
The photo on Trump’s side depicts much bluer water than the one on Obama’s side, though the photos are otherwise identical. Both images feature the exact same cloud formations and people walking alongside the pool, meaning one photo is just a color swap of the other.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on the president’s post.
The Reflecting Pool restoration project is among the latest of Trump 2.0’s dramatic and costly makeovers, which also include the president’s $400 million ballroom and underground bunker complex and the South Lawn’s temporary UFC Octagon construction.
Trump had initially estimated that renovations of the “reflecting pond,” as he called it, would take only a week or two and cost $1.8 million.
However, the project has lasted longer than a month, thanks to failed leak tests, and the firm handling it has charged the White House $13.1 million—over seven times the initial amount—for the work, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, Trump took multiple Ls on Monday, ranging from his catastrophic war on Iran to his culture war waged at home.
Iranian state media reported early in the morning that Tehran had suspended peace negotiations with the U.S. over Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon, which the country’s foreign minister said was a violation of the ceasefire.
“Any violation of this ceasefire on one front shall be considered a violation of it across all fronts,” Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X translated from Arabic. “The United States and Israel bear responsibility for the consequences of any breach of the truce.”
Trump attempted to damage control, saying in an earlier Truth Social post that he had “a very productive call” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia the U.S. has designated as a terror group.
The near-octogenarian said that two groups had “agreed that all shooting will stop” and that troops going to Beirut “have already been turned back.”
“Talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump said in a follow-up post.
However, it appeared that Netanyahu didn’t agree.
“Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut," Netanyahu, 76, wrote two hours later on X. “This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
Trump was then forced to post again on Truth Social to clarify.
“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around,” the president wrote. “I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them.”
“Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY!"
Domestically, courts struck down two separate measures by the Trump administration.
A federal court ruled on Monday, the first day of Pride Month, that the president’s January 2025 executive order banning transgender troops from military service was illegal.
Trump’s Department of Justice also backed down from its plan to create a $1.8 billion slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” after one federal judge temporarily blocked the scheme and another suggested reopening the case behind the backroom deal that sparked it.
The DOJ told the Daily Beast in a previous statement that it would not proceed with creating the fund and “will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
