Donald Trump is blowing through money on beautification projects, and he only has himself to blame.
The president, 79, could use a scapegoat to quiet down the criticism. But this time, he can’t deflect from the mess he’s making in Washington.
Trump has multiple projects underway, but he keeps spiraling over the revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
His overhaul includes painting its base “American flag blue” and ridding it of being a “disgusting, garbage-strewn dump that leaked.”
Trump primarily blames Barack Obama for the task. But there’s just one glaring issue.
Obama left office in 2017, and Trump took over the White House from 2018 to 2021. Joe Biden was president from 2021 to 2025, and Trump returned last January.
Those time gaps might as well be fake news because Trump insists on dragging Obama into the murky pool and blaming him for the distaster at the White House.
An image of an industrial dumpster, presumably from the pool site, filled with debris has people doing a double take.
The image showed several feet of dirty, black sealant, bags of trash, other debris, and a single brown cardboard box. It was photoshopped and reshared as a Trump Truth Social screenshot with the caption, “This is the CRAP that OBAMA had in the Reflecting ‘POOL.’”
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Trump was repeatedly called out in reactions like “Waterproof cardboard boxes. Impressive.”
Another said, “His cognitive decline is so severe I genuinely believe he does not know Obama hasn’t been president for nearly a decade.”
A third person commented, “And Trump did nothing about it during his first term.” Someone else asked, “What is that?”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the renovations in an X thread. His tweets detailed how new expansion joints are being installed to prevent future water leakage. Like Trump, he blames Obama.
He said the previous installation “under Obama, who wasted millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, have catastrophically failed, leaking 16 MILLION GALLONS of water per YEAR and costing hard-working taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Burgum also argued that Trump “isn’t making the Reflecting Pool Beautiful Again. He’s fixing the Memorial’s disastrous Obama-era errors that failed at the cost of million for the American taxpayer.” He attached the original photo of the industrial dumpster.
The photo circulated on social media after Trump published a screenshot of Burgum’s defense on Truth Social while slamming The New York Times.
He blasted the outlet for publishing articles exposing the project’s inflated costs and mounting issues with the upgrades.
Obama spent $34 million addressing issues with the reflecting pool during his second term, like preventing the monument from sinking further into the ground and installing a circulation system to keep the water clean.
Even with the upgrade, crews have to clean the pool yearly to prevent excessive algae buildup.
Trump’s refurbishment was projected to cost $1.8 million but has ballooned to an estimated $13.1 million. His plans currently do not include upgrades to aging pipes. Instead, crews are taking a $1.7 million shortcut on a treatment system that destroys algae and bacteria.
Critics believe Trump is overlooking the real issue and putting the monument at greater risk of ruin. He wants the project to be complete in time for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.
