Trump says Obama and Biden spent ‘hundreds of millions’ on reflecting pool. They did not
In April, President Donald Trump announced a project to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, hiring a contractor to cover the massive granite basin at a cost he said would be $1.5 million. He criticized his predecessors’ efforts to repair the site. Cabinet meeting on WednesdayHe claimed they spent “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Former President Barack Obama presided over the pool’s multimillion-dollar renovation, but the final bill was nowhere near Trump’s estimate. The Biden administration also did not conduct a major study. As for Trump, federal spending records show costs are much higher than he says.
The reflecting pool, more than 600 meters long, was first built. in the 1920s. It is located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and is one of Washington’s most iconic landmarks. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech here in 1963.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make this work, and they failed. So we’ll spend it, and you’ll give me a number, but I think it’s a very low number. Like the number we talked about in the first place.”
THE FACTS: This is false. The Obama administration spent at least $34 million on a massive two-year reconstruction project that ended in 2012. No major repairs were made to the pool during the Biden administration. Trump put the cost of work on the pool at $1.5 million to $2 million, but records show contract worth at least $14.8 million rewarded for the project so far.
Repairs made under the Obama administration addressed problems such as standing water, as well as the fact that the pool had begun to leak and sink into land dredged from the Potomac River to build it. The city has been redesigned with a circulation and filtration system that uses river water from the nearby Tidal Basin instead of drinking water. It was also made shallower to save water, and its bottom was painted gray to make the water darker and more reflective of the Washington Monument. Additionally, asphalt roads were added.
An Associated Press report from the day the pool reopened in August 2012 states that the reconstruction cost $34 million. Accordingly federal spending recordsThe government awarded at least another $1.3 million in contracts related to the project. These efforts were not entirely successful, however, as the pool continued to leak and experienced significant algae growth.
Chuck Sams, director of the National Park Service for most of the Biden administration, told the AP that a “full rehabilitation” of the pool was not moving forward after an estimate of more than $100 million came in. He said the pool has been cleaned every year during Biden’s term in office to prevent algae growth.
Asked to comment on Trump’s claim, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers wrote in an email: “Thanks to President Trump, the Reflecting Pool will be restored to its full glory ahead of America’s 250th celebration, with a fraction of the money that former Presidents Obama and Biden squandered only to make matters worse!”
Trump said while announcing After the current renovation, which looked like an irrelevant Oval Office in April, he had decided to cover the pool with a new “industrial-grade pool” surface in “American flag blue” for $1.5 million, covering the decades-old granite surface that he said “leaked like a sieve.” According to the president, he abandoned plans to replace the granite because it was estimated to cost $301 million and take at least three years.
At Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump said the pool was closed. steam cleaned, fumigated and coated. He added that workers “sandblasted and then we blasted it with gravel grinding” and that crews used “a very advanced type of rubber” to guard against leaks. Trump noted that as part of the renovation, cleaning crews removed “more than 10 trash bins.”
Interior Department spokeswoman Katie Martin did not comment directly on the discrepancies between what Trump said about the project costs and what federal records showed when asked, but said the price “reflects the effort needed to accelerate the timeline needed to complete the anti-seepage coating project — more people, more materials, more equipment and more hours before our 250th project.”
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
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You can find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
