Trump’s attempt to remodel the Reflecting Pool—cleaning it and painting the bottom blue—has instead turned into a massive mess. All this after one company that had previously worked on the Reflecting Pool turned the project down as unfeasible. Trump awarded it instead via no-bid contracts, including one for a water filtration system to one of his donors. Trump’s response was of course as measured as you’d expect, flinging unhinged and unsupported allegations of vandalism.
The New York Times explains:
President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”
But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.
Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine. ...
On Saturday, Mr. Trump acknowledged the pool would have to be at least partially drained for more work. On Tuesday, the president said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”
“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.
Mr. Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.
Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested.
Somehow a perfect metaphor for Donald Trump, both the man and the president.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
 | A guest post by
|