Trump Painted It Blue. Henry Bacon Wanted It Invisible: A History of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

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https://ghostsofdc.org/2026/05/10/lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool-history-bacon-mcmillan-trump/

Bacon’s idea was a mirror. A long, narrow, shallow plane of water aligned exactly between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument so that, depending on where you stood, the marble Lincoln dissolved into the sky and the obelisk multiplied into two. Roughly 2,030 feet long, 167 feet wide, 18 inches deep at the edges and 30 inches in the middle. The whole point of those measurements was that they should vanish.

This is a key part of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool history that often gets glossed over. The pool is not a swimming pool, despite what one architect told NPR last month about “pool guys” refinishing it like Mar-a-Lago. The pool is an optical instrument.

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Yeah, well I wanted it to be ten feet deep with tiger sharks.

We don’t always get what we want.

With frickin’ laser beams?



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I’m surprised he didn’t paint it gold.


The ’new’ color is a darker blue than an actual pool, and darker than the gray concrete of the pool floor. This is a destruction of it’s original intended purpose.


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Par for the course. Trump loves tacky shit and has no taste, aside from not giving two shits about what anyone else wants or wanted.


I, for one, am in favor of undoing everything he does and deleting Trump from history, unperson style.

It’s probably not the best way for future generations to learn from our mistakes, but it would upset him the most, and that’s what I think matters.

Deleting Trump from history is not enough. In 20 years he will be brought back as a forgotten hero.

What needs to be done is to change everything to “Trump is a pedophile.”

“Trump is a pedophile” needs to be on all park passes, passports, and large banners hung on federal buildings.

The Gulf of Mexico needs to be, “Gulf of Rapist Trump.”

I think we need a museum like the holocaust one as a cautionary tale of idiocy. I agree verything needs to be tagged with pedo related to him.




We’ll leave the epstien files, that should be enough.


Sorry. No money in the budget for that.

We can drop, like, 5 fewer bombs on brown people.

And leave America unsafe?! No thank you.





“This is a key part of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool history that often gets glossed over.” 🤦‍♂️ It’s right there in the name ‘Reflecting Pool’.


Trump told reporters his contractor had talked him out of his first color choice. He had wanted turquoise, “like in the Bahamas.”

“Just like Little St. James”




The idea behind all reflecting pools are mirrors. trumps just a low class idiot. dur dur. water should be blue.


Trump and his guys would just call you a fucking woke nerd for having such ideas about aesthetics.


he is such a rotten piece of shit. he ruins everything. i wish he would just fucking go away.


They should tear down all of Washington DC and give the land back to the Algonquin Nacotchtank

s/all of Washington DC/The USA/

Thank you for the correction I can’t believe I slipped



and the algonquin give it to the Beringians



I genuinely hope Trump has his face added to Mt Rushmore. It would be so funny and I personally do not give a shit about this monument. IMO it’s like Hans Lands getting the swastika carved into his forehead. It’s the same but for a whole country.


Wow… What a history. All these times I’ve been to DC and stood at the reflecting pool and I never knew it carried such a tale.


Good article, nice read.

Another blot on our country from Donny the Dunce, but I learned some really interesting history! Thanks!


“The mud underneath has not moved” bullshit. It’s been sinking.


It will still do that…

true, shockingly, it might just work

and work as a nice paddling pool?



Excuse the slop but I wanted to see an illustration of what this might look like, and I can see how someone like Trump would find the second picture an improvement.

Assuming that Mar-a-Lago is what he likes, maybe needs some gold-colored sunloungers to contrast with the blue water:

https://www.maralagoclub.com/spa-sports-recreation

The Beach Club extends the Mar-a-Lago Club property to include the two most beautiful acres of direct access private beach anywhere on the East Coast. Each member and guest that arrives at the extraordinary Beach Club will have an oceanfront experience unlike anything ever had before. The complex includes a 100 foot by 50 foot pool, whirlpool, a private beach and a beautiful full-service beachfront Bistro serving salads, sandwiches, grilled specialties and beverages.



Leave it up to a low IQ felon rapist to think slapping a coat of paint on something will fix it.

You make the mistake of assuming this moron is doing this as anything but a distraction.

Even a moron understands pissing on a monument might grab more attention than [insert any modern dumbass scandal].



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