Trump Posts Shirtless AI Photo of Himself and Cabinet Colleagues Lounging in Lincoln Memorial Ahead of Planned Renovation

JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum are also seen shirtless in the photo, which showcases the pool with Trump's intended shade of "American flag blue"

NEED TO KNOW

• Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself and cabinet members shirtless in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
• The image promotes Trump’s planned renovation of the pool, which he wants to feature “American flag blue” water
• Trump first shared his plans for the historic landmark in April after he said a friend criticized the monument pool as “filthy”

President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself shirtless in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of his planned renovations to the historic landmark.

The image — which Trump, 79, shared in a captionless Truth Social post on Friday, May 1 — shows the president floating in the pool alongside Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as an unidentified woman in a bikini and sunglasses.

Each person is seen smiling in the AI-generated photograph, and Vance, 41, and Trump both give a thumbs-up. Trump is also seen lounging in a gold-colored inflatable chair.

The water in the Washington, D.C. memorial, located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, is very saturated, similar to the multiple other altered images Trump shared on May 1 to demonstrate the shade of “American flag blue” he intends to make the pool.

Trump also shared a side-by-side comparison of his idealized version of the pool with an image taken during former President Barack Obama's first term in office.

The image, which he captioned “Hussein Obama,” was taken in September 2012, at a time when there was green algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to Politico. (The algae appeared in the pool — the largest of Washington, D.C.'s reflecting pools — after it reopened following a two-year renovation.)

“Coming soon,” Trump wrote alongside the doctored image of the blue water. In the caption, he added, “This is what our Country was before, and after, ‘TRUMP!' "

The fake images posted by Trump were shared less than a month after the president announced his plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Months earlier, he said he intended to "fix" it.

In an April 9 Truth Social post, the president said he and Burgum, 69, were "proud to be fixing" the "once beautiful" reflecting pool, which was constructed in the early 1920s.

"We were told it was going to take YEARS to do this job, and it will take a fraction of that time, at a fraction of the cost," Trump wrote at the time. "And it will be much more beautiful than the day it was built!"

Shortly after, during an April 23 event at the Oval Office, Trump stated that he was inspired to change the pool after a friend visiting from Germany criticized its condition as "filthy," according to the Associated Press.

"He said, 'It's filthy, dirty. The water is disgusting-looking. It's not representative of the country,' " Trump explained, per NBC News. “I went over there with Secret Service in tow, and I said, 'Isn't that a shame? That's terrible.' "

At the same event, Trump also said that he abandoned plans to replace the pool's granite and instead lay an "industrial grade pool" surface, per the AP.

In November 2025, Trump posted a black-and-white video of the pool on Truth Social, edited to highlight green water. "You won't be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer," he wrote at the time, referencing former President Joe Biden.

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The impending Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation comes amid several planned and ongoing renovations in Washington, D.C.

Trump has spent much of his second term renovating the White House inside and out, customizing it to his personal taste, despite others' objections.