President Donald Trump said work on fixing the renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would begin “immediately,” after previously suggesting it might need to be drained again to fix the damage he says was caused by vandals—just 16 days after the government refilled it following a project that made the bottom “American Flag Blue.”
A National Park Service employee uses a vacuum to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool near a missing section of blue coating on Friday in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Trump said he inspected the damage to the Reflecting Pool, insisting it was “seriously vandalized” by “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE” without providing further specifics.
In a series of posts on Truth Social on Saturday night, Trump blamed damage to the blue material lining the Reflecting Pool on “vandals,” whom he claimed “put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade” with a knife and poured “corrosive and destructive chemicals” into the water.
The president said the government would “probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs.”
