At the reopening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, President Donald Trump held up photos of cracks, rusted pipes, and blown-out joints that he says his team inherited. He argued that much of the pool's materials were "very defective" and that Obama and Biden installed them, which he said is one reason it was "leaking like a sieve." The pool is about 2,030 feet long and was built in the early 1920s on marshland, and it has struggled for decades with sinking, leaks, and algae. Trump made it clear he sees the reopening as proof the problem is finally fixed.

The record is more complicated than the photos suggest. The Obama-era reconstruction from 2010 to 2012 cost roughly $34 million and added filtration, but it did not end the pool's structural problems. Fact-checkers found no major repair work during Biden's term, so that part of Trump's claim has no support. Trump's own 2026 project applied an "American flag blue" coating and was first estimated at $1.5 million, but reports put the final cost at around $14 million to $16 million, and it ran into algae and peeling sealant before it reopened. The big question now is how long the new coating will hold up.