Debunked: Newly revealed docs bust Trump's vandalism guff

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US President Donald Trump reacts topics in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 4, 2026. REUTERS_Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump claims that his Reflecting Pool renovations failed because third-parties vandalized the institution — but a new story based on internal documents provides a different version of events.

“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,’” in a story broken by The New York Times’ Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold on Tuesday. “But government documents obtained by 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.”

They added that the documents show workers struggling to deal with problems in their renovations even as officials in the Trump administration insisted the pool was in excellent condition.

“The pool had been drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5,” the Times reported. “Four days later, Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.”

Yet there is no evidence the cuts were put there by saboteurs. Instead their provenance is “unclear.”

“While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as ‘razor blade slashes’ made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion,” the Times reported. “The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.”

He added, “By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.”

Additionally, the workers found that they could not succeed in killing the algae that was blooming in the pool, and turning it swamp green instead of clear blue, despite installing devices for that purpose.

It was also recently reported by Politico/E&E reporters Kinnia Cheuk and Heather Richards that the Reflecting Pool will not be ready by the 4th of July celebrations as Trump promised.

"President Donald Trump's beloved Reflecting Pool liner — now peeling and cracked — won't be fixed before Independence Day celebrations, according to the California company that supplied the waterproof coating,” Cheuk and Richards reported. “That news will sink Trump's wish to have the pool looking pristine for celebrations of the nation's 250th birthday."

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