Trump says reviving the White House pool is a ‘stupid thing’. Leavitt said he was ‘flirting’ with it

Trump has finally found a White House renovation too stupid for him, and he’s very cross that anyone thought otherwise.

At 8:08am ET on Saturday he posted that “There is a Fake News report out there that I am going to remove the White House Press Room and bring back the old Swimming Pool, which lies directly underneath.” The pool “will never be brought back. I NEVER even thought to do such a stupid thing!” In the same post: “I may move the Fake News to a less obnoxious location.”

The report is the New York Times’, from Tuesday. According to USA Today’s summary, the Times found he’d told his then-press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in August to move reporters out of the briefing room, and told aides that would let the FDR-era pool come back. Then on Friday Leavitt told Bill Maher he was “flirting” with restoring it, Al Jazeera reports. “I don’t know if he’ll do it,” she added. By Saturday morning, he never even thought of it.

Nixon floored over the pool for the press around 1970. The room currently has no press secretary to brief from it: USA Today notes there’s been nobody since Katie Zacharia left after five days. The East Wing was torn down for a ballroom and the South Lawn got a helipad. The pool, apparently, is where he draws the line. The reporters are still negotiable.