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President Donald Trump on Thursday shifted focus amid an Oval Office full of White House officials and pharmaceutical executives — and with the U.S. war in Iran entering its eighth week — for an extended ramble about hiring his hotel company’s preferred swimming pool builder to renovate the historic reflecting pool on the National Mall.

“The other thing that we're doing that's taking place right now is, the Lincoln Memorial has a beautiful reflecting pond, or lake. He called it a pool, lake and pond. Everything is different, but the word reflecting is a good term,” Trump said.

He complained that the 2,030-foor by 167-foot pool, which was built in 1922 between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, “never looked great” because the stone on the bottom of the pool was “not really meant to be a stone that's underwater for that much of a period of time.” Trump went on about how a “friend” from Germany had similarly knocked the landmark’s condition as “filthy, disgusting,” and “not representative of the country” while also claiming that the Biden administration had solicited bids to renovate the pool that had come in at $301 million and would take as many as “three and a half years.”

So, the president told reporters, he decided to employ a contractor he’d used to build pools at his Trump hotels and residential towers. “As a developer, I've probably built more than 100 swimming pools, different buildings. I built, and I have some really good pool builders ... but over the years, I've had three or four really good ones,” he said. “I took the best of the three. I had all three go, but I ended up taking the best. And I said, when you take a look at this, it's 2,200 feet long.”

Trump then recounted how he’d told Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that he’d asked his “pool guy” to look at the Reflecting Pool project and had been told the renovation could be done in a matter of weeks for far less than what had been bid previously. “I said, I have an idea. I'm going to send my contractor over and take a look. He looked at it ... he said it's really decaying and it's a terrible condition, but if you would, I'd like to work two weeks on cleaning it up ... and he said ‘it'd take me two weeks,’” he said. “Our job will take one week. It will cost about a million and a half dollars.” Trump then told reporters the reflecting pool project “is being done now” as he showed off photos of the ongoing work.

The president’s rambling remarks on his latest renovation project comes as Iran and the United States continue to face off over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Aren't projects like this supposed to be officially put out for a bid/tender so others may apply? If the "pool guy" is offering this for that amount of money - he would win and do it. If not it smells like an insider deal, like if Jimmy Carter had hired brother Billy to "make all the beer that will be served at White House picnics and functions" or something along those lines.