Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is drawing criticism from the establishment media over his obsession with the Trump administration’s revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.
The Trump administration is working to revitalize the capital ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, and that includes restoring monuments, fountains and beautifying the reflecting pool. However, many establishment media outlets have been critical.
Washington PostFor example, there’s an entire article devoted to picking apart the shade of blue chosen for the pool bottom, leading to a “color consultant” who believes the shade will look “too disappointing.” new York Times These reforms are also targeted, prompting a response from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“@nytimes has TDS and is ignoring the facts. The final material for the 2.5 miles of expansion joints in the Reflecting Pool passed testing last week and this week. A full-scale expansion joint installation is currently underway, with installation of the remaining four expansion joints scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday,” he said in a thread, noting that expansion joints installed under Obama “failed catastrophically, leaking and costing 16 million gallons of water per year “Hundreds of thousands of dollars from hard-working taxpayers.”
Burgum said, “POTUS isn’t just making the Reflecting Pool beautiful again, he’s fixing the Memorial’s disastrous, Obama-era errors that failed it at a cost of millions to American taxpayers.”
The Trump administration is installing “industrial-grade, leak-proof materials for expansion joints,” he added.
“The huge slabs that form the bottom of the pool, which is much taller than the Empire State Building, expand and contract depending on temperature. Special materials are required for the expansion joints to handle the movement expected during a rupture, rupture or leak. This is something the Obama administration did not understand,” he continued, correcting the record and reminding. Times That the material has passed all relevant tests.
“Specifically, during testing on cold nights last week, the test joint expanded more than 1 inch, but the material in the expansion joint remained completely intact, providing a perfect seal to prevent leaks. As we know @POTUS is an expert builder,” he added, Times Refuses to give honest or accurate reports on what is really happening.
Burgum said, “The bottom line: President Trump is the builder in chief and has made DC safe and beautiful ahead of our nation’s 250th celebration. This administration is doing this project at 10 times the speed, at a fraction of the cost. Under @POTUS we are fixing the Reflecting Pool forever. This should be a model for all cities across America.”
President Donald Trump also talked about the upgrade during a Cabinet meeting this week.
“It’s not as easy as people think. You never want it to leak. You want a beautiful surface,” he said, adding that workers pulled ten Dumpsters worth of trash out of it and recalling how a friend from Germany had drawn 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.
“It’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 would be completed by July 4.
