President Donald Trump is defending the cost of a renovation project at the White House reflecting pool by arguing that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars on similar work. Available federal records, however, show no evidence of expenditures on that scale.
Speaking about the ongoing project during a recent cabinet meeting, Trump took about 8 minutes to point to what he described as costly work undertaken by his Democratic predecessors, suggesting the current renovation is comparable to investments made under previous administrations.
But records show a much different picture. The largest recent renovation of the White House reflecting pool occurred during the Obama administration, when a years-long rehabilitation project was completed at a cost of roughly $34 million. The work addressed leaks, aging infrastructure and other maintenance issues at the historic site.
The Biden administration did not oversee a comparable renovation project. While federal planning documents examined potential future repairs and modernization efforts that could have carried significant costs, those projects were never implemented.
The discrepancy has drawn attention as Trump seeks to justify spending on the latest overhaul of the White House grounds. The president has repeatedly cited spending by Obama and Biden as evidence that previous administrations undertook similar projects, though publicly available records do not support claims that either...
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