President Donald Trump’s favorite color might be gold, but there’s another that recently received his attention and praise: American flag blue. That’s the color of the industrial-grade pool topping that is going to applied to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of renovations on the century-old monument.
The project to restore the 2,000-foot-long reflecting pool began two weeks ago by scrubbing the granite clean, according to Trump, who announced the development during an Oval Office event about healthcare on April 23. Who’s renovating the iconic site where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famed “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963? A contractor Trump knows who is “unbelievable at doing swimming pools.”
Crowds in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington. Photo: © CORBIS / Corbis via Getty Images.
The impetus appears to have been the recent visit of a friend who told Trump of their dismay at finding the reflecting pool on the National Mall looking worse for wear. Trump duly went to inspect the site himself with members of the U.S. Secret Service and Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, in tow. Trump concluded it was a “dirty, disgusting place,” one littered with garbage. To make matters worse, it supposedly “leaked like a sieve.”
According to Trump, the Biden administration had also sought to renovate monument and proposals had come in quoting $300 million and three years of work. His own strategy involved calling up three contractors that he knew (Trump claimed to have built more than 100 swimming pools) and asking them for “a good price.” Trump said the renovation would cost $1.5 million to $2 million, take two weeks, and result in a monument that was “much more beautiful than when they did it in 1922.” He said the renovation would last for 40 or 50 years.
Trump originally envisioned the pool being topped with turquoise so that it would look like the Bahamas, but was convinced by the contractor to choose “American flag blue” instead.
An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on October 23, 2025. Photo: Eric Lee/Getty Images.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was designed by the architect Henry Bacon (he also designed the Lincoln Memorial) as an outgrowth of the McMillan Plan, which redesigned and expanded Washington D.C. in the early years of the 20th century. It was previously renovated in the early 2010s by the National Park Service to the tune of roughly $30 million.
The renovation is the latest in a series of construction projects that Trump has spearheaded since returning to the White House. This has included paving over the Rose Garden, demolishing the East Wing in anticipation of a tech-funded ballroom, and goldening the Oval Office. The president also plans to build a 250-feet Triumphal Arch.
