White House officials described the overnight posting spree as a “vigorous communications response.”
President Trump responded to a New York Times report on rising costs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday night by posting an AI-generated image of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, alongside former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, bathing together in a fetid version of the basin, captioned “Democrats Love Sewage.”
The post was one of more than fifty made by the president on Truth Social in under an hour, hours before he was scheduled to depart for China. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers described the activity as a “vigorous communications response” to what officials characterized as a coordinated press effort to undermine the renovation.
“The president takes his communications responsibilities seriously,” Rogers said. “When the legacy media misrepresents a routine infrastructure project, he responds with the platforms available to him. The ‘Democrats Love Sewage’ image speaks for itself.”
The Highly Sophisticated Swimming Pool
The Times reported Monday that the Interior Department had increased the size of a no-bid contract for the project from $1.8 million to $13.1 million, with a separate $1.74 million contract going to an Ohio firm for filtration work. In another post during the overnight spree, the president defended the cost trajectory by clarifying that the Reflecting Pool should be viewed as “a highly sophisticated swimming pool, not the leaking, dilapidated facade, joints and all, of a building.”
“That distinction is doing a lot of work,” one Interior Department official said, declining to elaborate.
The contract was awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia firm that has previously done work on the swimming pools at Trump’s golf club in Sterling. Federal procurement records show the most recent contract modification reflects a 20 percent profit margin. Asked about the relationship, the president posted that he did not “give out the contract” and described the company as one he “did not know, and have never used before.” Last month, in remarks delivered in the Oval Office, the president said of the project: “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road. He looked at it. He called me up. He said, ‘Sir, we can do something on it.'”
Reporters who asked the White House to reconcile the two statements were referred back to the original posts.
The “Democrats Love Sewage” Image and Other Posts
The overnight posting period also included an AI-generated image of the president on the U.S. one-hundred-dollar bill, several posts repeating claims about the 2020 election that have been rejected in court, and a lengthy screed accusing the Times of “constantly making major mistakes and incorrect predictions at every path along the way.”
White House officials declined to specify which posts were drafted by the president personally and which were drafted by staff, citing operational considerations.
“Every post coming from the official account reflects the president’s voice,” Rogers said. “Whether or not he personally typed any given word is a question we don’t address, because the voice is consistent.”
An Interior Department spokesperson defended the underlying renovation, telling reporters that delaying the no-bid contract “would result in serious injury to the Government, including failure to meet statutory visitor-safety responsibilities and operational commitments for the 250th.” Asked to describe the nature of the injury, the spokesperson said the answer was “self-evident.”
American Flag Blue
The new color of the pool basin, which Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has described as “American flag blue,” is the subject of a federal lawsuit filed Monday by the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which argues that “a blue-tinted basin is more appropriate to a resort or theme park” than to a memorial. The complaint contends that the project violates the National Historic Preservation Act.
“There was a time in history when the base of this reflecting pool was asphalt black,” Burgum said in response to the suit. “The new color reflects the patriotic nature of our country.”
Asked whether the patriotic nature of the country had previously been reflected by asphalt black, Burgum said the question was “not a serious one.” For a related opinion view of the project, see Brent Flagstone’s column.
Trump’s overnight posts continued through the early morning hours, ending shortly before his motorcade departed for Joint Base Andrews. The “Democrats Love Sewage” image remained pinned to the top of the account through Tuesday afternoon.
The Times stood by its reporting. Atlantic Industrial Coatings has not commented. By Tuesday evening, blue coating was visible on roughly half of the basin’s floor.
Developing.
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