Trump Shades MLK Jr.’s Crowd Size: ‘I Actually Had More People’
President Donald Trump compared crowd sizes between his July 4th celebration and Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech, while talking about fixing up the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on Thursday.
“The Lincoln Memorial has a beautiful reflecting pond, lake, they call it a pool, lake, and pond. But the word ‘reflecting’ is a good term,” Trump began. “It was built in 1922, and it was built out of granite and various stones on the bottom, and it never looked great because, it’s not really meant to be a stone that’s under water for that much of a period of time. It’s about a foot-and-a-half to two-feet deep. You all know it well. That’s where Martin Luther King gave his great speech, and he had a million people, and I had the same exact crowd — maybe a little bit more,” Trump quipped.
“But they said I had 25,000 people on July 4. I have pictures of Martin Luther King’s crowd, my crowd, everything, but it was 70-years difference. The exact same crowd, but I actually had more people, but that’s okay,” Trump said. “They gave him a million people. They said a million people. I had 25,000 people…on July 4th.”
Most estimates put MLK Jr.’s speech audience at around 250,000 people. Trump may have been confusing the event with 1995’s “Million Man March,” which also took place on the National Mall.
Trump went on to discuss the two-week project to clean up the reflecting pool, saying the contractor is going to use “the latest and greatest filament or material, which is essentially a pool surface, but it’s an industrial-grade pool.”
Trump joked that he wanted the surface painted “turquoise like in the Bahamas.”
“‘He said, this is Washington, sir, we can give you turquoise but why don’t you try like, we have a color, it’s called American flag blue.’ I said, ‘That’s the color I like!’ He talked me into it very easily,” Trump said.
“This is industrial grade and it’s really beautiful,” Trump continued. “So you’re going to have a beautiful pool and you’ll have it for July 4th — long before July 4th. Instead of taking three, three-and-a half years, we’re taking a week. And instead of spending $301 million, we’re spending less than $2 million. I think it’s a great business story.”
Earlier Thursday, Trump held a press conference to announce Most Favored Nation pricing with pharmaceutical company Regeneron.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
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