Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joined ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, where the two sparred over the renovation of the Reflecting Pool in DC.
Stephanopoulos repeatedly attempted to claim that the renovation was a failure, denying that the Trump administration had fixed anything and insisting that something “went wrong” with the renovations, while ignoring the vandalism and destruction of the pool’s lining.
He first attempted to attack Trump over the roughly $15 million cost of the job to fix and properly seal the pool with crack and leak-proof materials and expansion joints, which will withstand the years and changing temperatures that come with the seasons. The pool was previously sinking and leaking millions of gallons of water per year into the swamp beneath.
Stephanopoulos implied that because the pool is now closed due to vandalism and because of the cost, it was a failed renovation. “What went wrong? How are you going to fix it? How much is it going to cost?” he asked Burgum.
“Let’s put this all in context: Under President Trump’s leadership, Washington, DC, we fixed 48 monuments, 22 fountains that hadn’t had water going for years. We eliminated over 1000 graffiti sites. All of these things have been going on across the city, and you know, everybody that lives in Washington, DC says the place has never looked better. And, of course, you look at the crime stats, the city has never been safer,” Burgum fired back.
“Of the 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250, we did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward.”
It should be noted that Barack Obama’s failed project in 2012, which had a massive cost of $34 million, more than twice what Trump is paying, left the pool flooded with algae and leaking a whopping 16 million gallons of water per year due to incompetence. Obama’s botched repairs took nearly two years to complete, while Trump’s repairs of Obama’s errors, replacing the leaky pool with industrial-grade leak-proof materials, are already finished after starting in April.
Burgum highlighted this several times throughout the interview as Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed Burgum on the cost of fixing the issues that Obama left behind, attempting to grill Burgum with gocha questions because he didn’t like his answers.
“The real story here is how did we let this nation’s capital fall into such disrepair, where we had monument after monument, statue after statue, fountain after fountain, covered with graffiti, anti-American graffiti, and how that was never reported as a story, and now, when President Trump goes to fix it up, that becomes a story,” Burgum said after debunking the notion that the renovation was unsuccessful twice.
But Stephanopoulos didn’t give up, again suggesting that “the pool is not fixed right now” due to plans to drain it and repair the new vandalism. “Well, it’s fixed in the sense, it’s no longer leaking 45,000 gallons a day,” Burgum told him, noting that the project was still a “fraction of the cost” of Obama’s $34 million job.
Stephanopoulos then tried to deny claims that vandals had torn out the Reflecting Pool’s lining and further attempted to blame Trump for the cost of repairs.
“We do have video, and we do have eyewitness reports, and that’s up to the courts now, so that that process will go forward in the legal system,” Burgum noted.
WATCH:
The post WATCH: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum Destroys George Stephanopoulos’ Reflecting Pool Lies – Calls Out Media for Refusing to Report on Damaged Monuments but Attacking Trump for Fixing Them appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
