It’s never been altogether clear why exactly Donald Trump began fixating on renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but like his beloved ballroom vanity project, it’s not going smoothly. The endeavor is not only facing a new lawsuit, the price tag has climbed to $13.1 million — more than seven times the original cost the president touted — as part of a no-bid contract that circumvented federal procurement laws for dubious reasons.

In fact, it’s reached the point where Trump has quietly changed his story about his role in the project, in ways that suggest he would prefer to put some distance between himself and the undertaking.

A few weeks ago, for example, the president boasted in an official White House video about his direct, hands-on role in choosing a contractor: “I said, ‘What we’re going to do is, I’m going to call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools.’ … And I said, ‘Give me a good price.’”

Last week, he repeated the story in similar terms: “I said, ‘Do me a favor, fellas, go take a look at the Reflecting Pool that sits in between Lincoln and Washington, the beautiful, what should be beautiful, Reflecting Pool.’ And one of them who came back, who’s really, I would say the best, but they’re all good. He came back, he said, ‘What an exciting job, sir.’”

As CNN’s Daniel Dale noted, this week Trump replaced his recent claims with an entirely new story. On Tuesday morning, the president published a lengthy rant to his social media platform that included this nugget:

… I didn’t give out the contract, “Interior” did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

That the president’s version of events is already evolving suggests he realizes he has a burgeoning political problem on his hands.

Complicating matters, the list of troubles appears to be getting longer. The New York Times reported Tuesday:

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Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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