Trump touts ‘American Flag Blue’ paint job on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

Workers have begun painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue as part of US President Donald Trump’s bid to beautify Washington DC ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday this summer.

The historic pool, stretching 2,030ft (620m) between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, has long been plagued by leaks, structural deterioration, faulty pipes, algae growth and bird droppings.

Trump has said his project to restore and paint the monument would solve the leaking problem and make the pool more beautiful than ever.

But it is unclear whether the repairs can specifically fix the underlying structural issues at the attraction, which was built in 1922.

The president took to social media over the weekend to share visualisations of what the attraction would look like when the job was done, noting that its new colour would be “American Flag Blue”.

In a video message from the Oval Office in April, Trump said the reflecting pool was “filthy, dirty, and it leaked like a sieve for many years”.

But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose departmental purview includes the monument, had pledged to solve the problem, Trump said.

Initial bids to renovate the pool included an estimated cost of $300m (£220m) and a timeline of over three years, Trump said. It was also proposed to remove the pool’s original granite and replace it with stone, the president added.

But Trump said he found “a better way of doing it” and called some contractors who had worked for him in the past on renovating swimming pools, He said they could do it for $1.5m to $2m.

“We scrubbed the surface of the existing granite that’s been there since 1922 we then grouted all of the granite, fixed it up, took about two weeks, and now we have a nice, clean surface on which we’re putting an industrial grade swimming pool topping,” he said.