The manager at Trump's North Jersey golf club set up the botched renovation of the Reflecting Pool, according to a NYT investigation

Michaelle Bond, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Aug 8, 2026

Published in Political News

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The person who set up the botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington is the manager at President Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

The Times found that David Schutzenhofer, who has run the Trump Organization’s golf club in North Jersey since 2006, was chosen by Trump to lead the renovation of the national landmark, which had leaked for years and was full of algae.

The Times noted that Schutzenhofer does not have formal training in architecture or engineering and is Trump’s private employee, but the golf club manager “played an off-the-books role in government decisions” regarding the project.

The company that Schutzenhofer chose to do the renovation partnered with a company that enlisted the help of a third company that had never won a government contract, and applied the pool’s lining that later peeled away.

Charles Birnbaum, president of the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation, told the Times that paying millions of dollars to a first-time contractor to undertake a plan orchestrated by a golf-club manager to fix a national landmark was “like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met.”

In January, Schutzenhofer attended the World of Concrete trade show in Las Vegas in search of ideas for fixing the Reflecting Pool, according to the Times. Vendors recommended he call Rodney Jarboe, president of Creative Polymers, a company based in Missouri.

Jarboe told the Times he first spoke with Schutzenhofer in March and was told the president wanted the work done in time for the Fourth of July, which Jarboe called “a very tight deadline.”

He said Schutzenhofer decided to coat the Reflecting Pool with a polyurea liner, but Trump’s tariffs made getting polyurea coatings difficult. So Jarboe partnered with a California-based company called Rhino Linings, which then got a Virginia-based company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to help apply the coating.

Soon after the Trump administration said the renovations were finished in early June, the blue lining began to peel. Algae also returned. The Reflecting Pool was then drained so it could be repaired.

Spokespeople for the Trump administration defended the project in statements to the Times. Neither Schutzenhofer nor Rhino Linings responded to questions about their roles, according to the Times. Atlantic said in a statement that a “very small part” of the liner needed repairs but otherwise declined to comment.

Trump has claimed without evidence that vandalism was behind the damage to the Reflecting Pool. But in a court filing, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, admitted that “the damage was the result of a botched installation.”

A judge this week dismissed felony charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn after he was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. And Pirro has moved to dismiss cases against several others.