President Donald Trump laid blame on the individuals responsible for wrecking one of his renovation projects in Washington.
A new message appeared on the fences around the Lincoln Memorial this month, and it portended bad news for anyone who reads it closely.
The signs now inform visitors that crews are “repairing areas damaged by vandals,” and that earlier administrations allowed the monument to decay. Clogged pipes, dirty granite, decades of neglect since 1922 were cited.
The pool will stay drained, the signage promises, until it can “truly reflect the beauty, dignity, and grandeur of our nation’s capital.”
Then, social media users uncovered updated images of the Reflecting Pool, and the signs ceased to matter.
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The footage from Wednesday, Aug. 26 shows workers dismantling the pool by hand. Photographer and videographer Joe Flood posted the footage in the early hours from the drained basin.
By the afternoon, it had drawn nearly a million views.
As crews power-wash the bottom of the pool, the blue sealant, visible in the video, lifts in chunks. Workers can be seen peeling strips of the liner off the basin floor by hand.
Meanwhile, the pressure washer dislodges more scraps of the coating. “Sealant is coming up in chunks at the Reflecting Pool,” captioned one X user.
The Daily Beast, which reported on the footage, said the White House sent its questions to the Interior Department, which did not respond immediately.
In the meantime, replies beneath Flood’s video were unrelenting.
Sealant is coming up in chunks at the Reflecting Pool pic.twitter.com/C2x17nlEXW
— Joe Flood (@joeflood) August 26, 2026
“We’re watching the culprits right now,” one person wrote with sarcasm. ”I thought it was indestructible and could never be removed,” another commented.
One X user did the math: “The fact that it’s so easily peeled up with just a pressure spray shows that the coating was never applied or allowed to cure properly, because it had to be done in time for the Child in Chief’s b’day. This admin does nothing but waste taxpayers’ money.”
Others took stock of the scene. Many observed, “No gloves. No tools. One person holding a power washer. Two guys ripping up sheets with their hands. The rest watch. No other equipment in sight.”
Another keen observer zoomed in and wrote, “Wow, 7 workers but only three working. Good job, guys. Drain the swamp.”
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is 104 years old and remains one of the National Mall’s most photographed locations.
The Reflecting Pool is still empty and closed off – the scene this morning pic.twitter.com/Ay8lAOrdHB
— Joe Flood (@joeflood) August 26, 2026
Trump ordered the project renovated ahead of the country’s semiquinquennial birthday celebrations, and his personal touch was the color. He labeled the coating “American Flag Blue,” and bragged that the work could endure for a century.
It did not endure the summer. The liner began peeling within weeks, and the pool produced its worst algae bloom in years. It has been drained, refilled, and drained again since June. Crews began the latest round of repairs last week, according to The Washington Post.
Trump’s explanation has not wavered. He insists vandals did it. He claimed someone cut a gash hundreds of feet long into the liner and called the culprits “sick, deranged people.” His own Justice Department, however, disagreed.
In a 20-page filing, Pirro wrote that internal Interior Department documents showed the damage stemmed from “flawed installation by the contractor” and a rush to finish before the July Fourth events. NPR reported that charges against three other individuals were dropped as well.
Trump did not take it well. He said he was “very disappointed with Jeanine Pirro” and that she “folded like an umbrella.”
He then posted on Truth Social, “There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” It was a familiar move for a president who has long clamored over the pool damage.
Jeanine Pirro, his top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., moved on July 31 to dismiss the felony case against David Hearn, a 67-year-old three-time Olympic canoeist accused of ripping up the pool floor.
Meanwhile, new signs have gone up on the fencing around the pool, advising visitors that crews are “repairing areas damaged by vandals.”
The wording on the signs also blames earlier administrations for the landmark’s condition, citing clogged pipes and dirty granite.
The pool will stay drained, the signage says, until it can “truly reflect the beauty, dignity, and grandeur of our nation’s capital.”
The company handling the fix is the same one that botched it the first time. Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which was awarded a no-bid contract for the original job, has been rehired, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum saying “they did a fantastic job,” per PBS.
Trump said back in April that he had chosen a contractor who had previously worked on one of his own swimming pools. He has since floated an entirely new design for the pool—a proposal that prompted fans to zoom in and decide he had gone too far.
For the moment, the crews remain on site with pressure washers, removing a president’s paint job by hand.
