President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday to announce the completion of work on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — and used the occasion to both thank himself by name and note that a stretch of the historic monument's grounds would henceforth bear his name.
"Thank you President Trump, thank you Department of the Interior," Trump wrote, crediting his own administration in the third person before pivoting to the news buried in the post: the forthcoming "Trump Promenade at The Lincoln Memorial."
The pool, Trump claimed, was originally opened in 1922 but had "never functioned properly" — a claim that may surprise the tens of millions of visitors who have gazed into its waters over the past century, including the hundreds of thousands who gathered there for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.
Trump described the pool's surface as "very complex, but powerful, Dark Blue" before workers submerged it in what he called "CLEAN, BEAUTIFUL WATER" — a standard feature of reflecting pools.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum was on hand for the inspection, riding alongside workers in what appeared to be an off-road utility vehicle flying an American flag, with the Washington Monument visible in the background.
The announcement did not stop at the promenade. Trump also teased the "Triumphal Arch" and his "White House Ballroom," claiming that when completed, these projects would constitute "the Greatest Structure in Washington" — a city that already contains, among other things, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial itself.
The renaming of public lands and federal monuments after Trump has accelerated in his second term. The administration has already moved to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America," among many other proposals.
The Lincoln Memorial, completed in 1922, is administered by the National Park Service and was dedicated to the 16th president. It is unclear what congressional or regulatory process, if any, was used to authorize naming a portion of it after the 47th.