Corruption that would have been unimaginable even in Trump's first term is now routine. Trump's emergency powers, which he gave himself, were that he didn't like the color.
Source: The Independent
President Donald Trump used a government exemption to give a $6.9 million no-bid contract to his “pool guy” to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to a blue color after complaining it “never looked great.”
The exemption is typically reserved for urgent situations to prevent “serious injury, financial or other, to the government”, according to documents reviewed in an exclusive report by The New York Times.
But Trump used the exemption to get the company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to quickly begin work on the memorial as part of an array of building projects and refurbishments taking place across Washington D.C., ahead of America’s 250th birthday this year.
“I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road,” Trump told reporters about the project in the Oval Office last month.
And today we've just learned that the price has swelled to $13.1 million. via The New York Times:
President Trump said that his handpicked contractor would charge only $1.8 million to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and paint it blue.
The actual cost is now more than seven times that, after the Interior Department nearly doubled the size of the contract late last week, federal records show.
On Friday, the Interior Department added $6.2 million to the contract’s previous cost, saying it now planned to pay $13.1 million to a Virginia firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings. President Trump said he chose that company to repair the landmark because the firm had worked on the swimming pools at his golf club in Sterling, Va.
A lawsuit has now been filed to stop this madness.
An AI rendering of Trump's latest abomination.
The staggering level of corruption.
...just got worse.
