Get the Facts: Examining Trump's statements about reflecting pool – WMUR
President Donald Trump recently ordered a renovation of the National Mall’s reflecting pool, which spans the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, including painting the bottom of the pool “American flag blue.”
Critics say the changes would turn one of the nation’s hallowed monuments into a swimming pool, and a landscape architecture group has filed a lawsuit.
PolitiFact chief correspondent Lou Jacobson recently looked into a few of the statements the president has made about the reflecting pool.
One thing Trump said was the reflecting pool is longer than the tallest building in the world if you set it on the side, and it’s almost 200 feet wide.
Jacobson: So, that’s not quite true.
The pool is 2,028 feet long, and that would rank it fourth in the world if it were a skyscraper, following buildings in Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai.
News 9: Trump also said the reflecting pool repairs will take about “two weeks.” How is that estimate holding up?
Jacobson: By now, it’s been three weeks since Trump first said it would take two weeks. He said the project is doing more than was planned at first.
I went to the pool a few days ago, and the full length was covered in black, with trucks and machinery visible and making noise. The pool was circled by black fencing.
More recently Trump said, “We are probably 70% finished with it” and that it would open “in a couple of weeks.”
News 9: OK, so the president also said on May 7 the federal government will fix the pool for about “$1.8 million.” Is that still accurate?
Jacobson: No, it’s significantly more now, due to the greater scope of the project. According to news reports, the cost is now $13.1 million.
News 9: Finally, there is some question over whether Trump knew the contractor who was picked to overhaul the Reflecting Pool.
Jacobson: So, Trump has said different things about whether he knew the contractor. He’s said the company has “worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools,” but in a later Truth Social post, he said he “did not know” the company and had never used them before.
The White House told us that Trump does not have a personal relationship with the contractor but that he was familiar with the company’s work.
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