US Politics
Trump’s ‘pool guy’ appears hard at work on Lincoln Memorial icon, new photos reveal
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New photos of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool show the latest mark that President Donald Trump is having on some of the most iconic spaces in the nation’s capital.
Officials insist that a new ocean-blue swimming pool coating being applied to the base of the Reflecting Pool will make for a cleaner, more picturesque scene for the thousands of tourists and D.C. locals who walk by the spot every day.
The renovations come after Trump complained that the 2,030ft by 167ft pool, which was built in 1922 between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, “never looked great” because the stone on the bottom of the pool was “not really meant to be a stone that’s underwater for that much of a period of time.”
Trump told reporters last week that to sort the situation, he was hiring a contractor he’d used to build pools at his Trump hotels and residential towers. “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road,” the president said.
For now, the entire pool is fenced off, drained, and covered with construction equipment, including port-a-potties, as D.C.’s peak tourism season begins. On Monday, college graduates were taking photos in front of the empty cement basin, where a small blue square of sprayed-on coating is beginning to take shape at one end.
Tourists took photos at the Lincoln Memorial steps and with the backdrop of the Washington Monument, but a handful of others peered through the fences, wondering what was going on. No signage indicates what the pool’s eventual appearance will look like for the families walking by or overlooking the project on the Lincoln Memorial’s steps.
Workers weren’t present at the site Monday, but a handful of tools were strewn around. National Park Service personnel could be seen performing other repair and beautification work nearby at the Vietnam War Memorial, where fence poles were being replaced and repainted by staff.
Photos taken by The Independent show the sheer scale of the project, which will likely take weeks or even months to complete, depending on the pace of progress. Only a few hundred square feet appeared to be covered by Monday afternoon. The pool itself is more than 330,000 square feet in area.
For Washington D.C. officials, it’s one more headache caused by a president who made a physical transformation of the nation’s capital one of his top priorities upon his return to the White House. Preservationists also fear that the new look will be tacky and artificial, compared to the solemn feeling meant to be evoked by the old design.
Even as his legislative agenda has been stalled by slim GOP majorities in the House and Senate, the president has focused a large portion of his energy on construction and beautification projects at the White House and across the District of Columbia.
Inside the White House, gold filigree and lettering have appeared across the West Wing, which has also evolved to suit Trump’s decorative tastes in other ways. The complex’s historic East Wing was demolished last year, stunning preservationists and city residents, to make room for a planned ballroom and other renovations, like a secure bunker for the president and his staff.
Across the city, the changes are just as apparent.
Parks and public edifices from one end of D.C. to the other are undergoing renovations, refurbishments and more as the president directed the Parks Service to repair fountains and conduct other beautification work to improve the scenery and encourage tourism.
That’s hardly the half of it, though: Trump’s “takeover” of the nation’s capital last year involved an effort to federalize the city’s police force and deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops around D.C., many of whom remain in place at transit stations and are conducting foot patrols downtown. Federal law enforcement also swarmed the city, conducting a massive wave of immigration-related arrests and providing a visible, militarized presence on city streets.
The initial pressure on D.C.’s leaders and population was heavily resisted by residents, who engaged in verbal and sometimes physical confrontations with members of federal law enforcement during immigration-related stings and raids. A man was charged after throwing a sandwich at one agent, but a jury refused to convict him.
One year later, that law enforcement presence has disappeared, but has spread around the country to places like Minneapolis, where two Americans were killed protesting ICE and DHS operations. The National Guard remains, largely milling about and occasionally intervening in incidents that take place in their vicinity. Two Guardsmen were shot, one fatally, last year outside a Metro station near the White House. A memorial is now on the spot.
Other aspects of Trump’s efforts to assert his presence and control across the city remain, however, as many federal buildings and headquarters still bear massive banners depicting his face.
Beautification projects like the one at the Reflecting Pool also bear small signs indicating that they are part of the administration’s overall efforts to make the nation’s capital “safe and beautiful”.