President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the long-neglected reflecting pool has become the latest target for the usual Trump-hating mob, which now seems to object to basic maintenance if the wrong man orders it. The pool had been leaking for years, suffered algae blooms, and was wasting millions of gallons of water annually.
That inconvenient reality keeps getting buried under performative outrage. Trump said the project could be done for about $1.8 million, and the Interior Department’s latest contract value is $13.1 million, according to the New York Times.
The New York Times tried to dress that up as a scandal, but even its own report admitted the pool has had chronic leaks and algae problems for decades.
The government awarded that firm a no-bid contract last month, bypassing the requirement to seek competing offers by saying that the situation was so urgent that any delay would cause “serious injury” to the government. The government has not publicly said what that injury would have been.
Instead, it has cited Mr. Trump’s desire to get the work done before the country’s 250th birthday on July 4.
Public contracting records do not say why the contract’s cost increased so sharply on Friday. Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said that the higher price “reflects the effort necessary to expedite the timeline of completing the leak prevention coating project — more people, more materials, more equipment and longer hours ahead of our 250th.”
Democrats and their media cheerleaders have been pretending that this is some grotesque vanity project. That would be more convincing if the reflecting pool hadn’t been visibly in rough shape. Images of the green, grimy pool have been making the rounds online, which tends to undercut the “nothing to see here” routine. It turns out a filthy, leaking monument does not magically become a masterpiece just because social media influencers, in an effort to get more clicks, decided that a much-needed renovation was the latest constitutional crisis to feign outrage over.
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There was also a far pricier alternative on the table. Previous plans reportedly called for a full granite replacement that would have cost roughly $301 million and taken years, so the outrage over a project that is being done for a fraction of that price is especially rich.
That brings us to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who seems to be one of the few Democrats still capable of noticing when his party has gone off the rails. He blasted the whining on X, saying, “Stop this henpecking.”
Stop this henpecking.
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) May 11, 2026
$13M? This is an iconic American place and was in serious disrepair.
Get over the TDS and celebrate this is getting done for our 250th. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/X5PcTHfv8h
Fetterman has been pushing back on his party’s most reflexive anti-Trump posturing for months, and he continues to sound more grounded than the professional outrage machine on his side of the aisle that apparently believes the reflecting pool should be left to rot in disrepair.
In the end, here’s what’s happening: Trump is restoring a national landmark that had been neglected for years. The left is furious because that restoration might make him look good, and Fetterman just cut through the noise with a simple message: get over it.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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