Donald Trump on Monday furiously blamed “vandals” with sharp objects for the growing mess that has overtaken his project to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
At an unrelated White House event, a reporter asked Trump about the ongoing state of the pool. The structure, which is the length of multiple city blocks, has been under renovation for weeks after Trump decided to drain the pool and had the surface spray-painted with an aqua blue coating used in swimming pools.
Photos and videos over the past week have shown chunks of that coating separating and floating up to the surface amid a swamp-green mess of algae that National Parks Service employees are desperately battling.
Trump claimed on Monday that a 300-foot long “slit” had appeared in the pool coating, which he attributed to a box cutter or knife and claimed that the National Parks Service was investigating. Reporters have not independently confirmed his account of the damage.
“No, we had vandalism…no, vandals,” he responded, when asked who was responsible for the problems. “We have a 290-, I think 300-foot slit right through, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.”
According to Trump, the pool may need to be drained and repainted again.
The project has ballooned into a $14 million money hole for the administration, which has included the effort to resurface and repair the famously-leaky Reflecting Pool in the president’s broader campaign to beautify downtown Washington, D.C.
Employees with the park surface have been unable to clear the pool of algae since the pool was refilled and the continued issues facing the project have become somewhat of a fixation for D.C. residents, reporters and others bemusedly watching the situation from afar.
Reporters have not been able to verify any acts of actual vandalism within the pool, which at times has been fenced off as workers continue repainting and de-algaefication efforts.
The president was challenged to provide proof of his claims of vandalism at his event on Monday, and claimed that the existence of the “slit” which he described in varying sizes was proof itself; reporters have not seen it for themselves.
“When you have a 350 foot slit, do you think that’s proof?” Trump asked CBS’s Ed O’Keefe, who responded: “Reporters have been down there today looking for that slit you mentioned. There’s no evidence [of it].”
“All you have to do is see the parks department. They’ll show it to you,” the president shot back.
The Independent reached out to the Parks Service for comment.
A handful of arrests have been publicly reported at the Reflecting Pool since the project began, but none for the kind of large-scale vandalism Trump has claimed. One former Olympian, David Hearn, was arrested on the scene after he claimed to have touched some of the peeled-off pool coating surface out of curiosity. Hearn denied to the Daily Mail that he was guilty of vandalism, as the administration charged.
“It’s a completely unfounded accusation,” he said. “We’ve already heard many lies from this administration…That’s just another lie.”
Critics of the project say the blue paint is a waste, and transforms the original intended look of the memorial.
Trump, however, is going full steam ahead with his renovation efforts and recently also announced plans to extend the Lincoln Memorial down to the Potomac River waterfront with a “promenade” he claimed was part of the architects’ original intent.
