Donald Trump’s last appeal to midterm voters, held at the base of the Lincoln Memorial with the Reflecting Pool as a backdrop, exposed the fact that the restoration is already deteriorating, the Washington Post reported.
During his speech, Trump bragged about the renovation. “We fixed the leaks, we resurfaced the bottom in a beautiful dark blue,” he said, adding that it had been finished in “the strongest coating you can get.”
Right after the speech, two Washington Post reporters walked the entire perimeter of the reopened pool. They found several spots where the coating appeared to be "cracked or starting to peel." In at least 20 other areas, the color was "noticeably uneven, streaked with light blue" instead of the “American flag blue” Trump touted.
Alerted by the Post, the Interior Department responded with an unsigned email full of praise for the president.
“The Reflecting Pool has never look this beautiful and it’s all thanks to President Donald J. Trump,” a spokesperson wrote. “He’s an expert builder who was able to repair the pool in ways Obama and Biden could never even dream of.”
The spokesperson blamed the light-blue patches on “surplus coating” that would “fade away or be lightly scrubbed off.” Shown photos of the apparent cracking, the spokesperson called them “stray pieces … left over from the renovation and needed repairs due to deranged vandalism,” and said they would be picked up.
The cause of the flaws isn’t clear, according to the report. But two people with knowledge of the situation told the Post that the National Park Service "knew early last week" about uneven coloring in areas that had already been repaired a second time.