President Donald Trump had The New York Times in his crosshairs early Tuesday morning after the publication reported the higher cost of his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation.
The president raged on Truth Social about reporting that included the Interior Department plans to pay a contractor $13.1 million for the project. This is way higher than the $1.8 million figure Trump suggested when he announced the plan last month.
The Times cited federal records that show the Interior Department increased the contract by $6.2 million, bringing the project total to roughly $8 million before additional costs are included. The report also revealed the administration awarded the no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a firm that had reportedly renovated pools at Trump’s Virginia golf club previously.
The renovation includes repairing leaks in the Reflecting Pool beneath the Lincoln Memorial as well as repainting parts of the structure “American flag blue.”
Trump addressed the allegations of the ballooning price tag, writing The Times was “trying to justify [Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden’s botched attempt at fixing the long broken, unsightly, and unsanitary” pool.
“They squandered at least 55 Million Dollars haplessly trying, with no chance of success, to get the Reflecting Pool to work,” he wrote. “Instead, they made it worse, keeping it closed for years, and ending up with a leaking, smelling, ode to both of their failed Administrations. It was and [sic] embarrassment to Washington, D.C., and to our Country, itself. Despite the vast sums of money spent, they never got the pool to work, and cosmetically it was a total mess for all to see.”
Trump then portrayed himself as the only person capable of rescuing the project from bureaucratic incompetence.
“Now, along comes ‘TRUMP,’ who is asked by many patriots if I can fix it. The answer is a resounding, YES, and for a “tiny” fraction of the cost!” he wrote.
He wrote he instructed the Department of the Interior to contract the work as if repairing a “highly sophisticated swimming pool” for a fraction of the price and to complete it “in 2 weeks rather than 4 years.”
Trump journalist David Fahrenthold, who wrote the report, calling him a “lowlife” who, he said, “so inaccurately and maliciously” characterized the work as a “paint job.”
“It is a deeply complicated work of smart and beautiful construction,” Trump wrote. “It won’t leak, it will shine, and be the pride of Washington D.C. for decades to come. I saved more than 390 Million Dollars, and 4 years of no “mess,” and was, of course, given no credit by the biased New York Times.”
Trump ended his post with a disclaimer: “Also, I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before.”
