In the beginning, there was a pool. It was green, and broken, and hemorrhaging millions of gallons a year into the soft earth beneath the National Mall. For decades, nobody fixed it.

America turns 250 this July. For a country that can't agree on anything — especially about Donald Trump — what is reflected back isn't always easy to look at.

'It looks real good. And you know what, 'scuse my French, but I f**king hate that.'

In preparation for the 250th celebration, the pool was drained, painted, and fenced off. It brought on lawsuits, court hearings, and more cable news segments than anyone expected from a paint job.

And then the water came back in. On June 4, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool refilled under a blazing June sun. Tourists, joggers, and D.C. regulars lined the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to watch the water rise.

The reflecting pool is the centerpiece of a broader $95 million push by the Trump administration to restore Washington ahead of the 250th. Under Executive Order 14252, "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful," the National Park Service launched a sweeping effort to restore fountains, rehabilitate historic landscapes, and address aging infrastructure across the city.

The funds come not from the NPS' congressional budget but from national park entrance fees — money the agency is legally permitted to redirect at its discretion.

More than 20 fountains that had sat dry for years — some for decades — are flowing again. The Columbus Circle fountain in front of Union Station was turned back on in late May for the first time since 2007. Meridian Hill Park's cascading fountain — the longest in North America — is running again.

The reflecting pool is the latest in a series of restoration projects that have drawn surprisingly positive reactions across the city — even from residents who didn't vote for Trump.

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The pool was designed by architect Henry Bacon and completed in 1923 — a long, narrow mirror stretching almost 2,030 feet between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Trump compared the pool's length to "skyscrapers."

The nation's reflecting pool has also been leaking for most of its existence. The original structure was built without pilings on the soft, dredged riverbed and started losing water almost immediately.

The Obama administration spent $34 million and closed the pool for nearly two years, rebuilding the structure with foundation support and installing a brand-new filtration system. The algae came back within a month. The leaks never stopped.

By the time Trump took office, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said it was losing 45,000 gallons a day.

The Biden-era NPS received estimates "above $100 million" for another fix and didn't move forward.

Trump ordered a different approach. Workers drained the pool, hauled away what he says were 12 truckloads of garbage, sealed the cracks, and replaced the filtration system with a state-of-the-art ozone nanobubbler — the first of its kind at the pool. Then, they coated the basin in what the president calls "American Flag Blue."

When Trump first visited the drained pool on May 7, he said previous estimates to fix it had run as high as $355 million and 3.5 years. He initially said it would cost $1.8 million and take one week.

The contract was signed for almost $6.9 million — awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia firm, through an expedited no-bid process. The DOI later revised the timeline to a month and added $6.2 million, citing the urgency of the July 4 deadline.

It took six weeks. Federal contracting records show the final cost came to just under $14.2 million — more than eight times Trump's 1.8 million estimate, yet roughly 4% of the $355 million he said it could have cost otherwise. Trump says the work will last 50 to 100 years.

"Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people," he told reporters who questioned why he was focused on the pool during a period of international tension. "Not a filthy capital."

Trump drove his motorcade across the drained floor to inspect it personally. He also posted an AI image of himself and other Cabinet members swimming in it.

"It won't leak; it will shine and be the pride of Washington, D.C., for decades to come," said Trump.

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But the landscape architects and historic preservationists weren't concerned about the preventable water loss. They were concerned about "American Flag Blue."

"It wasn't intended as a place that looks jolly like your local golf course," said Judy Scott Feldman of the National Mall Coalition, a nonprofit that helps protect the area's historic legacy. The Cultural Landscape Foundation filed suit, calling the project a "permanent blemish" that would turn a national landmark into a "theme park."

The pool's original bottom was dark asphalt and tile — not Obama's 14-year-old tinted gray concrete that critics defended as "historic." The NPS agreed that a darker bottom, like Trump's dark navy, improves reflectivity.

An EarthCam time-lapse from the top of the Washington Monument shows what actually changed. The pool isn't green any more. Trump's new nanobubbler targets the algae, and the sealant addresses the leaking joints that the Obama renovation didn't.

One problem reportedly remains: two miles of cracked underground pipes that, if they fail, could shut down the filtration system and bring the algae back. The Trump administration says pipe replacement will begin in the fall.

Blaze News went out to the National Mall and asked five people what they thought.

A resident who has run the Mall route for six years barely broke stride. "I didn't like the construction, so I started running the Jefferson Memorial way. Honestly, I don't even care who did it. It was Trump, right? I'm not really political — I work in tech. It looks fine."

A 13-year-old on his school trip said his class had studied the "I Have a Dream" speech just weeks before. "I didn't know the pool was broken. I just thought it was always like this."

A retired couple from Western Pennsylvania had been here before — once for the Bicentennial in 1976 and twice since 2023. He pointed to their matching MAGA hats. "We promised to come back only to Trump's Washington," he said, "and seeing it completed makes me feel more patriotic than I already was."

Not everyone Blaze News spoke with voted for Trump. In 2024, Washington, D.C., voted more than 92% for Kamala Harris.

A college junior interning on Capitol Hill had watched the construction drag on through her first weeks in the city. "I tried walking by here to romanticize, you know, my D.C. hot-girl summer," she said. "The construction was low-key annoying. Our office has been talking about it, and besides the fact that it seems, yet again, like just another one of Trump's pet projects, I wouldn't go as far as to say it looks bad."

A lifelong resident who works in education stopped at the edge of the pool, looked out at the water, and said: "I'm not going to give that man credit. I'm just not. But it does look good. It looks real good. And you know what, 'scuse my French, but I f**king hate that."

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