Trump slams The New York Times over Reflecting Pool Rehabilitation project

Politics

WASHINGTON, U.S (NPA) —The President of the United States has criticised The New York Times and one of its reporters, David Fahrenthold, over reports concerning the ongoing rehabilitation of Washington’s Reflecting Pool, accusing the newspaper of biased and misleading coverage of the project.

In a post on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, the President dismissed what he described as attempts by the newspaper to defend the Obama and Biden administrations’ handling of the project.

“The Failing New York Times, which is one of the worst newspapers anywhere in the World, and is losing subscribers on an hourly basis, is now at it again,” he wrote.

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He further accused the newspaper of inaccurate coverage of the 2024 presidential election and alleged that it was attempting to justify what he described as the “expensively botched” rehabilitation of the Reflecting Pool located between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

According to the President, previous administrations spent more than 55 million dollars on efforts to rehabilitate the pool without success, alleging that the project left the site closed for years and in deteriorating condition.

“It was an embarrassment to Washington, D.C., and to our Country itself,” he stated, adding that despite the large sums spent, the pool allegedly continued to leak and suffered cosmetic defects.

The President claimed his administration could complete a superior rehabilitation project for between five and six million dollars within two weeks, compared to what he alleged would have taken four years and cost about 400 million dollars under previous plans.

He said the new approach treated the Reflecting Pool “as a highly sophisticated swimming pool” rather than as a conventional building structure, arguing that the revised method would deliver better long-term results at significantly lower cost.

“This is not just a paint job,” he wrote, rejecting characterisations he attributed to Fahrenthold’s reporting. “It is a deeply complicated work of smart and beautiful construction.”

The President also maintained that the project contract was awarded by the Department of the Interior and not by him personally, adding that he had no prior relationship with the contractor handling the rehabilitation.

“I saved more than 390 Million Dollars, and four years of no ‘mess,’ and was, of course, given no credit by the biased New York Times,” he added.