OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
1:01 PM – Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman appeared to defend the budget for President Donald Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Tuesday, directly telling critics on the left to “get over the TDS.”
In a post on X, Fetterman addressed a report from The New York Times which cited federal records indicating the actual cost of the project had risen to $13.1 million, significantly higher than the $1.5 million to $2 million range originally touted by the president.
Despite the discrepancy in the figures, the Pennsylvania senator dismissed the backlash over the “American Flag Blue” renovation, arguing that the obsession with the price hike and the aesthetic changes was a symptom of reflexive partisan hostility rather than a legitimate fiscal concern.
“Stop this henpecking. $13M? This is an iconic American place and was in serious disrepair,” Fetterman wrote. “Get over the TDS and celebrate this is getting done for our 250th,” he added, referring to the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) and the upcoming celebration of the country’s 250th birthday on July 4th.
According to The New York Times, the U.S. Department of the Interior increased a contract with the Virginia-based firm Atlantic Industrial Coatings by $6.2 million to facilitate the renovation.
This budgetary update follows President Trump’s explanation last month that the previous Biden administration had quoted a staggering $301 million for a comprehensive, three-and-a-half-year overhaul aimed at replacing the landmark’s original stones.
Prioritizing speed and cost-efficiency ahead of the nation’s Semiquincentennial celebration, Trump instead hired a specialized swimming pool company to apply an “industrial-grade swimming pool topping” over the existing stones to seal leaks.
The president further defended this streamlined approach as a rapid, weeks-long solution compared to the years of construction originally projected.
Additionally, Trump dismissed the critical coverage from the Times, asserting that while former Democrat President Barack Obama “expensively botched” the maintenance of the “long broken, unsightly, and unsanitary Reflecting Pool,” his own administration has finally provided a functional fix.
“It won’t leak, it will shine, and be the pride of Washington D.C. for decades to come,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I saved more than 390 Million Dollars, and 4 years of no ‘mess,’ and was, of course, given no credit by the biased New York Times.”
The Obama administration spent between $30 and $34 million on a two-year-long major restoration of the pool, funded through the 2009 stimulus package.
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