Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is blasting the establishment media over its obsession with the Trump administration’s fixes of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.
The Trump administration is working to revive the capital ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, and that includes restoring monuments, fountains, and making the Reflecting Pool beautiful again. However, several establishment media outlets have been critical.
The Washington Post, for example, has an entire article devoted to picking apart the shade of blue chosen for the bottom of the pool, running to a “color consultant” who believes the shade will look “very dismal.” The New York Times has also targeted these improvements, prompting a response from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“The @nytimes has TDS and is ignoring the facts. The final materials for the 2.5 miles worth of expansion joints at the Reflecting Pool passed testing flawlessly last week and this week. Installation is currently underway for one full-scale expansion joint, with the installation of the remaining four expansion joints scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday,” he began in a thread, noting that the expansion joints installed under Obama “catastrophically failed, leaking 16 MILLION GALLONS of water per YEAR and costing hard-working taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“POTUS isn’t just making the Reflecting Pool Beautiful Again, he’s fixing the Memorial’s disastrous, Obama-era errors that failed at the cost of millions for the American taxpayer,” Burgum said.
The Trump administration, he continued, is installing “industrial-grade, leak-proof materials for the expansion joints.”
“The massive slabs that form the bottom of the pool, which is much longer than the Empire State building, expand and contract based on the temperature. Specialized materials are necessary for the expansion joints to handle the expected movement while not breaking, cracking or leaking. This is something the Obama administration didn’t understand,” he continued, correcting the record and reminding the Times that the materials passed all relevant tests.
“Notably, during the testing with the cooler nights last week, the test joint expanded more than 1 inch, but the material in the expansion joint remained perfectly intact, providing a perfect seal to prevent leakage. As we know @POTUS is an expert builder,” he continued, concluding that the Times refuses to give an honest or accurate report on what is actually happening.
Burgum added, “Bottom line: President Trump is the Builder in Chief and has made D.C. Safe and Beautiful ahead of our nation’s 250th celebration. This administration is doing this project at a fraction of the cost, at 10 times the speed. Under @POTUS we are fixing the Reflecting Pool for good. This should be a model for all cities across America.”
President Donald Trump spoke about the upgrades during a Cabinet meeting this week as well.
“It’s not as simple as people think. You never want it to leak. You want a beautiful surface,” he said, noting workers hauled out ten dumpsters of garbage from it and recalling how a friend from Germany called attention to the “disgusting” nature of the Reflecting Pool. Trump said he then went to see it himself and was not happy with what he saw.
“That’s terrible. And for the most part it didn’t work. I mean, they wouldn’t even have water in there, but when they did, it was just dirty,” he said, adding that it will be complete by July 4.
