Trump 'returning to the scene' of his crime at Reflecting Pool: legal foe

U.S. National Park Service employee works to remove algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Heuer

President Donald Trump will "return to the scene of the crime," said one of his top legal foes, Norm Eisen, when speaking to former CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane.

After a chat about Eisen's preparation to file lawsuits the second Republicans or the administration attempts to seize ballots, they pivoted to Trump's 2 p.m. speech he intends to deliver at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

When Trump announced he would speak at the pool, political analysts wondered why the president's closing message would be at a place that became a symbol of failure.

"It's a return to the scene of the crime. I mean, they talk about this compulsion. And in this case[,] The wrongdoing was the shocking corruption," Eisen said. "Think of it, Scott. Donald Trump was responsible for pushing a rushed, botched installation of the reflecting pool, wasting your and my money and all the taxpayers' money, as he does with all these D.C. projects. And then? He blames an innocent man, Davey Hearn, and we battered the government with more than seven motions, starting as soon as he was arraigned, proving his indictment, using their own evidence. Finally, we forced them to dismiss."

Trump alleged that Hearn or someone took a knife and sliced a huge gash into the liner of the pool. As it turns out, the installation left a large crack. There was never a gash.

It's unknown just how much Trump's administration spent to renovate the Reflecting Pool, but it is many times more than what was first cited. The first quote, on April 23, was that it would only cost $1.5 million. He said that it'll likely come in "under budget and ahead of schedule."

The pool was finally filled last week when it was slated to be finished for the July 4 weekend. In June, before the second round of fixes, the costs reached over $16 million, ABC News reported.

Eisen then celebrated that they "argued and won before a judge dismissed with prejudice because it was a junk case."

He compared it to Trump's "junk lists" that he gave to California claiming that there were 20,000 illegal voters.

"So you're seeing a compulsion. If I were giving the president advice, the last place I would tell him to go is the Reflecting Pool, which symbolizes the corruption to the American people," said Eisen.

"But fortunately, we have a dictator dunce," he quipped. "I don't know the trouble we'd be in if he were more competent. That's the crisis. It's a corruption crisis and a competence crisis that has caused a cost crisis. And that is how the American people understand democracy. It's a government that should work for them, not against them on cost, corruption and incompetence. And I think they're going to make this MAGA movement pay a very serious price for that. On election day, tomorrow."

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