Just a week after the completion of President Donald Trump’s much-hyped $14 million renovation of the iconic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the water is green and a thin layer of “American flag blue” paint originally meant to augment the color of the feature has begun to peel.
But rather than blaming Mother Nature or the contractor who won a no-bid contract for the renovation, Trump has turned his ire on another alleged culprit: vandals.
“Many additional people have been arrested having to do with the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted.
There is little evidence of wide-scale sabotage that may have led to the pool’s rapid decay. Trump claimed on Truth Social that someone slashed the new paint with “some form of knife or blade” and poured “corrosive and destructive chemicals” into the water, allegations that local authorities have yet to corroborate.
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Instead, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro’s office has set its sights on people who picked at the peeling paint or even simply documented the situation by camera — as in the case of David Hearn, a three-time Olympian who stopped by the National Mall following a bike ride on Friday to see the pool for himself and ended up in handcuffs.
Hearn told The Washington Post in an interview after his arrest that he took several photos of the site and touched a piece of the peeling paint that had floated to the surface, but denied pulling it off or otherwise damaging the property.
“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”
Trump also accused ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl, who also touched a piece of the peeling paint during a broadcast last week, of “trying to rip the rubber off of the surface” — an act that Pirro would not rule out prosecuting during an interview on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.”
When asked if she would consider opening a case against Karl, Pirro told host Peter Doocy: “It depends.”
“Anyone who is in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the Reflecting Pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C.,” she added, while extolling the virtues of “broken windows” prosecutions that go after even minor offenses.
National Guard members, who the president ordered into D.C. to help tamp down on crime, were seen patrolling near the Reflecting Pool over the weekend.
Trump had pushed to renovate the pool in advance of America’s 250th birthday, spending nearly $15 million to drain it, seal the bottom and leave a coating of American flag blue paint that he said would reflect better. Algae, which has been a constant issue in the standing water, returned a week after the pool was filled, leaving National Park Service staff last week to pour bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the water and vacuum up the algae from the bottom.
Despite some small initial success, the efforts appeared to have been for naught: The algae rebounded quickly and the coating began to peel, sparking a series of viral stories and ridicule from Trump’s critics.
To fix the problems that have arisen, Trump said the federal government would “probably” be forced to drain the Reflecting Pool again to complete repairs. He said that he had already met with contractors and that he planned to restore the structure to its original state.
“The Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago, even going back to 1922 when it opened,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday. “We are very proud of what we have done with this magnificent structure, and we will get it repaired, quickly, to an equal level of Beauty.”
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