Donald Trump’s Reflecting Pool fiasco just got even more embarrassing.
As Congress investigates the botched $16 million renovation that turned one of America’s most iconic landmarks into a murky green mess, a new report reveals that one of the companies with firsthand experience repairing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool reportedly looked at Trump’s plan, and wanted no part of it.
Why? Because, according to CNN, the project was simply “unfeasible.”
That revelation adds another layer of irony to a renovation Trump repeatedly boasted would finally “fix” the Reflecting Pool once and for all. Instead, within days of reopening, the water turned bright green from algae blooms, dead ducks were recovered, blue coating began peeling off the bottom, and the entire site had to be fenced off for repairs.
Rather than acknowledge the obvious construction failures, Trump has insisted the damage was caused by vandals, even claiming “someone carved a 300-foot-long gash” into the pool and illegally dumped chemicals into the water. Authorities have arrested several people in connection with alleged vandalism, but the president has yet to provide evidence that sabotage caused the renovation’s spectacular failure.
Now, CNN reports that New Jersey-based Sika Corporation, the company that supplied construction and sealing products during the Reflecting Pool’s 2010 renovation under President Barack Obama, declined to participate in Trump’s overhaul after reviewing the plans.
According to two company employees who spoke to CNN, the combination of Trump’s aggressive July 4 deadline and his insistence that the bottom of the pool be painted “American Flag Blue” made the project unrealistic from the start.
According to the report, Sika engineers proposed a much more extensive repair involving the pool’s expansion joints, the narrow gaps that allow the massive concrete structure to expand and contract with changing temperatures.
Their solution reportedly involved installing metal coverings over the joints before painting them blue. But because those metal sections would remain underwater, engineers warned the finish would likely become uneven and inconsistent over time. Fixing the problem correctly, they concluded, would require far more time than the Trump administration was willing to allow.
Instead, another company ultimately supplied the spray-on coating used during the renovation. Even before the project officially wrapped up, one of the company’s executives reportedly acknowledged that the work would not actually be finished by Trump’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.
That deadline increasingly appears to have driven the entire project.
Critics have accused the administration of rushing construction to create a made-for-TV patriotic backdrop for America’s 250th anniversary celebration rather than allowing engineers to complete the work properly.
Those criticisms are now fueling multiple congressional investigations into how the contracts were awarded, why costs ballooned, and whether political connections played any role in selecting contractors.
The latest report only raises more uncomfortable questions.
If the company that helped renovate the Reflecting Pool before looked at Trump’s plan and reportedly concluded it couldn’t be done safely or properly on the proposed timeline, it becomes much harder to dismiss the current disaster as simple bad luck, or blame it on mysterious vandals.
It starts looking exactly like what critics have been saying all along: A rushed vanity project that ignored engineering reality—and left taxpayers paying millions for a pool that turned green almost immediately.
