Washington DC—Non-union workers are in the last week of spraying layers of combination aerosol blue paint and sealant thought to be toxic, into the dry bed of the Reflecting Pool basin. The iconic monument built in 1922 rests midway between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, and is a lesser recognized monument although it provides a significant aesthetic link between the Washroom and Lincoln Memorials. The Reflecting Pool was a prominent feature in the backdrop of Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘I Have A Dream’ speech in 1963.
The paint project has taken about 2 weeks to cover the 2030 foot by 167 feet square pool, which is 18-inches deep at its sides and 30-inches deep at its center. The project is expected to cost somewhere over $13 million, over 10 times more costly than Trump announced at the project start.
The price may end up being even more than that, for many of Trump’s statements about original costs or timelines have proved inaccurate. The finish date was expected to be by May 22, but finish dates are conceptual and have no meaning in the bizarre world of Trump as they too have been pushed past initial announcements. Trump’s Iran “Skirmish” War end date was 10 days but 80 days laster is still not over. The tariffs, construction of his “Big Beautiful Wall” and his “Big Beautiful Ballroom,” all went longer or are delayed.
At least the Refleing Pool paint job is a more straightforward project that can’t possibly go much more awry than his Iran “Skirmish,” which morphed into a war, which is nearing its 4th month. And his ballroom which was supposed to be funded only with private donations—it won’t be—as evidenced by a congressional bill to procure another billion dollars of taxpayer’s funds to complete it, is mired in legal challenges and a congressional funding impasse.
The latest project at the reflecting pool has not taken into consideration the difficulty of keeping clean what is the equivalent of 26 olympic sized swimming pools in terms of square footage. There is no water filtration system which typical pools have and since the pool is often a convenient resting place for and hosts Canadian Geese, Mallard ducks, and other birds, it will be next to impossible to keep it from algae contamination. The blue tinge will almost certainly turn green by the end of the Summer unless a filtration system is built or installed and is adequate enough to filter the 100,000s of gallons it contains several times a day.
Then there are the scores of elms and oaks that shed leaves from September through December and blow into and clog the Reflecting Pool. The leaves too will have to be filtered and managed at additional expense. Unless there is a team of pool cleaners with suction hoses, it’s likely the project will not result in anything like the enhanced photo of a blue lagoon with swimming happy past presidents as Trump has posted on social media.
The paint job is the latest phase in Trump’s effort to re-image the city into his vision of royalty.
Other projects have included painting over the White House columns, painting over the Old Executive Mansion edifice, repairing the disused fountains in Lafayette Square, redesigning Lafayette Square itself. Covering the Rose Garden with concrete, a big deal at the time, seems like a forgotten footnote compared to the giant ballroom which will eclipse the White House in a royal manner fit for a king and relegate it to the prominence of a hut.
The White House has been half torn down since October 2025 when Trump contacted a demolition team in a no-bid East Wing “remodeling” which actually turned out to be a complete razing of the historic wing. None of this was vetted or approved by the National Trust for Historic Preservation or followed the National Historic Preservation Act guidelines. The Ballroom and destruction of the White House East Wing is being challenged in court.
Trump’s giant photo poster is already glaring down on DC citizens from government buildings as if George Orwell’s Big Brother took absence from its place in 1984 to pay DC a visit. It adorns the giant edifices of Departments of Agriculture, Labor, and Justice. Trump’s name has also been added in bronze to the marble face of the John F. Kennedy National Center for the Performing Arts.
He plans to build a gigantic “Triumphant Arch” at Memorial Circle. If it beats court challenges and is built, it will rise several hundred feet above and eclipse the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. This has stirred the ire of Veterans who are mobilizing to challenge it in court because it overshadows the resting place of 250,000 service members who served in or died in wars since after the Civil War. Once completed the arch will also partially block the view of the cemetery from the Lincoln Memorial. It will rise over every corner of the cemetery and be visible from miles around, even from the Iwo Jima Monument, marking the landscape permanently. One may recollect a spat between the Air Force and Marines in the late 1990s when the Air Force attempted to place its rising contrails memorial too close to the Iwo Jima Monument, and the ensuing blowback forced its relocation to a site near the Pentagon about 2 miles away.
What Trump and company believes will be his signature monument to himself will be adorned with a giant golden Eagle taking flight. Trump served not one day in uniform so to many Veterans, it is considered a grotesquely misplaced symbol of vanity.
Trump’s policies have been riddled with disaster after policy disaster and Trump’s policy fiascos and failings have taken the economy and government operations down to lows not seen before. Never before has a president failed so successfully while he had the tables of the three branches of government tilted decisively in his favor.
Trump’s reimagining of the nation’s capital has all the vibes of dictators and authoritarians from other lands that came before him. The authoritarians are most remembered for the days they were banished, fled, or were forced into exile, and their vanity monuments were quickly torn down by the people. Who can forget the razing of the statues of the ‘Butcher of Baghdad,’ the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the demolition of nazi symbols of oppression, the swastika on the Zeppelinfield Grandstand, on April 22, 1945?
Vanity monuments to living tyrants have their half lives. And for tyrants swept from power, those half lives are often very short.
