President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated photo of himself where he is shown shirtless and floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with others of his administration on May 1. The photo comes on the heels of his ongoing push to renovate the historic Washington landmark.
Donald Trump posts AI photo of himself and cabinet members
The AI photo, which Donald Trump posted on Truth Social without a caption, showed the president lounging in a gold-colored inflatable chair and giving a thumbs-up. Vice President JD Vance, also flashing a thumbs-up, appears alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and an unidentified woman wearing a bikini and sunglasses. All people in the doctored photograph are shown smiling in the pool, which sits between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The water in the photo appears heavily saturated with blue coloring.
Trump shared multiple altered photos on May 1 to demonstrate the shade of “American Flag Blue” he intends to use for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. One post featured a side-by-side comparison of his idealized blue-water version next to a photograph from September 2012, taken during Barack Obama’s first term. Trump captioned that comparison “Hussein Obama.”
The 2012 image showed green algae present in the pool after it had reopened following a two-year renovation. Trump wrote, “This is what our Country was before, and after, ‘TRUMP!'” Then, in November 2025, Trump posted a black-and-white video of the pool on Truth Social that was edited to emphasize green discoloration in the water. “You won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer,” he wrote.
Trump’s AI shirtless photo was released less than a month after he formally announced plans to renovate the reflecting pool, which was originally constructed in the early 1920s. It is one of several renovations Trump has started throughout Washington, D.C., during his second term, including extensive customization of the White House interior and exterior (via PEOPLE).
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.
