Trump defends exploding Reflecting Pool renovation cost: 'Somebody put fertilizer in water’

WASHINGTON, DC: Donald Trump has shown little patience for critics questioning his ambitious Lincoln Reflecting Park renovation project, whether it concerns the peeling blue paint or the blooming algae.

The 81-year-old president sparred with a reporter on Monday, June 22, as he defended the soaring cost of the renovation project.

When Trump unveiled the restoration project in April, he estimated it would cost $1.8 million. Just months later, however, the price tag has reportedly surged to nearly $14.7 million, according to an Interior Department contract awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

The price tag climbed even higher after the National Park Service gave an additional $1.74 million contract to Ohio-based Green Water Solutions to install a "nano bubble" algae-control system, fast-tracking the work ahead of Fourth of July celebrations.

Trump compares his project's cost with Obama’s

The President, on Monday, was speaking to the media in the Oval Office when he doubled down on his ‘vandalism’ claims, insisting that someone deliberately dumped fertilizer into the pool to trigger the algae outbreak.

“They put — somebody said fertilizer in the water. If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae,” Trump said.

“But that doesn’t matter because that’s been purified. It's dead. Lying at the bottom. They’re taking it out. They vacuum it out. They vacuum it very carefully out. And it will be back to health pretty soon,” he continued.

As Trump went on to speak about his project, CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe pressed him on the exploding cost of the renovation.

“Part of what’s curious about this situation is, we stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans,” began O’Keefe. “You said you had a guy who was gonna do it in a week for about a million dollars. It’s been two months, $16-and-a-half million.”

“Well, okay, are you ready? Barack Hussein Obama. Have you ever heard of him?” Trump asked.

When O’Keefe indicated that he had, in fact, heard of former President Trump, he stated that “He spent two years and over $100 million on trying to fix it. You know what happened to it? It never opened. He took the water from the river. You know about that, right? It turned out to be putrid, and it destroyed the whole thing. Spent over $100 million.”

He also claimed that plans under the Obama and Biden administrations would have cost between $300 million and $400 million and taken four years to complete, whereas his team finished the work in six to seven weeks for roughly $10 million.

“I have a better product. Now I can’t help if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up. And we also have pictures of it,” he further stated.

Jeanine Pirro vows to prosecute Reflecting Pool vandals

Trump previously defended his administration's beautification, blaming vandals for the troubles that have cropped up after the renovation.

“We've had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool, which sits between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial,” he wrote.

Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia, on Sunday, doubled down on Trump’s claims, saying her office would prosecute individuals caught vandalizing the pool.

“Anyone who is in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the Reflecting Pool will face the criminal justice system in DC,” Pirro said during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.” “Look, the president has made it a priority to make DC not only safe, but beautiful.”

Five individuals were arrested in connection with reports of vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.