Trump’s Reflecting Pool Reno Is So Bad, They Have to Drain It Again

The Trump administration seems to be living in an alternate reality when it comes to the president’s vanity projects.

Despite having to drain and fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool within weeks of insisting the renovation was complete, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum insisted to ABC News Sunday that the multimillion-dollar restoration was nonetheless a “big success.”

“And so when we look in context, President Trump set out to make D.C. safe and beautiful. He’s done that,” Burgum said. “The Reflecting Pool was part of the original design of the Lincoln Memorial.… It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day.”

Burgum then cited attempts by previous presidential administrations to remedy the pool’s leaks, including the Obama administration’s two-year, $34 million effort between 2010 and 2012. The difference now, according to Burgum, is a vast advancement in technology, such as “nanobubblers” that he claimed have completely rid the pool of algae, as well as an industrial liner that has stopped the pool from leaking.

Neither of those details, however, appear to be true. Within days of refilling the pool, the algal bloom that the Trump administration had spent $14.7 million to eradicate had returned, while the painted liner at the bottom had begun to slough off.

“So the Reflecting Pool has been a big success. And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward,” Burgum said.

“Well, you say it’s been a success, but the pool is going to be drained this week, isn’t it?” asked host George Stephanopoulos.

“We don’t know if we need to drain the whole thing or not because, you know, the cutting happened on the edge,” Burgum responded. “And of course, again, when you’re talking about 340,000 square feet of surface, even though there was, you know, damage done by vandals that was there, it is a small, small—99.99 percent of the pool bottom is perfect.”

Donald Trump had originally promised that the project would cost $1.8 million. Now, it seems the total project will cost far more than $15 million.

In another interview with CNN, Burgum again insisted—without evidence—that portions of the pool’s broken liner were caused by vandalism, echoing Trump’s explanation for the failing reno.

“It didn’t peel off. There was vandalism. There were box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There were people literally trying to destroy part of a monument, the Reflecting Pool,” Burgum told the network.

“There are photographs of a person or people cutting a 300- or 350-foot gash in the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?” pressed State of the Union host Dana Bash. The president initially announced late last month that the damage involved a 250-foot gash. The following day, the number escalated to 300, and then 350 feet the day after that.

“Dana, I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not—think, this is an industrial liner,” Burgum continued. “Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally—literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. This is, like, a strong material.”

“The only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it,” Burgum said.

The sky is actually falling at the Great American State Fair.

The stage for Freedom 250’s July Fourth celebration fell apart during rehearsals Thursday, with a large component of the structure’s ceiling falling roughly two stories down and landing behind a group of dancers and musicians. Miraculously, no one appeared injured.

Online commenters were quick to flame the stage’s apparently dangerous construction.

“That’s what happens when you don’t consider merit in hiring,” wrote one X user.

“This is why you never let Trump select the subcontractor based on percentage of kickback,” commented another.

Even a lawmaker joined in on the roast.

“Feeling more and more like the Hunger Games,” wrote Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Practically every component of Trump’s wildly expensive plan to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary has turned out to be a dud. The $15 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed to rid the iconic monument of algae; a multi-week lineup of music acts had to be cancelled after practically every artist pulled themselves from the program; and a fleet of buses carrying a contemporary retelling of American history have failed to make a splash in their journey across the country.

The Great American State Fair was supposed to be the centerpiece of the celebration, yet even it is more of a potemkin village than a sincere homage. The booths, which offer space for each state to represent its heritage and culture (pet a replica of a bison at the North Dakota pavilion, or walk away with a bag of chips from Maine), are ideologically pitted against the seismic presence of the federal government and Trump’s authoritarian expansion (banners featuring Trump’s grim face flank the event, while a small-scale replica of his proposed “Triumphal Arc” sits center stage). As The Atlantic’s Kelsey Ables put it, “the president is bringing down the mood.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced Thursday that a grand jury had indicted former Olympic canoeist David Hearn on charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The indictment seems rather flawed, as Hearn, 67, maintains that all he did was dip his hand into the pool and touch a piece of peeling paint.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post the day after his arrest last month. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

At a press conference Thursday, a reporter asked Pirro why Hearn was being charged with a felony over something so small, and she struggled to explain.

“There was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the pool, and irrespective of whether or not we think that there is some situation that preceded it, we can state, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that he caused damage, and that damage is worth over a thousand dollars,” Pirro said.

When asked how she could prove that, Pirro said, “With an expert,” and urged the reporter who asked the question to come to the trial. The reporter incredulously asked if Hearn used his bare hands, to which Pirro affirmed yes, both hands. The reporter then asked if the pool wasn’t already damaged before.

“Oh, he damaged it. He damaged the pool. He damaged this pool,” Pirro repeated. When the reporter brought up videos showing that the pool’s paint was already peeling, Pirro said, “Well, good. I’m glad you got that evidence. Come on in the grand jury and you can testify.”

It all seems nuts, as the poor state of the pool, from algae growth to peeling paint, had been documented for quite some time before Hearn visited it. The paint had been peeling because hydrogen peroxide was dumped into the pool in a vain effort to kill algae growth. Hearn is clearly being made a scapegoat to satisfy President Donald Trump, who is blaming nonexistent vandals rather than admit he messed up the pool.

A heat wave in Washington, D.C., is making attendance at President Trump’s July 4 festivities even worse.

U.S. Capitol Police have already restricted Thursday night’s rehearsal for “A Capitol Fourth Concert” to essential personnel, posting on X that they came to the decision after consulting with the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician.

“For safety reasons, the public will not be able to attend tonight’s rehearsal concert,” the post read. “Everyone is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. The National Weather Service is forecasting an extreme heat watch with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.”

The post added that an update will come Friday by 10 a.m. on the status of the full concert, which is scheduled to take place from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday night.

Similar warnings are hitting the Great American State Fair; organizers have already had to cancel a rodeo demonstration scheduled for Thursday night. Attendance at the fair overall has been depressed, and some visitors are complaining about the weather. U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer had an audience of maybe 25 people when he spoke about tariffs on the main stage Thursday afternoon.

Many booths at the fair don’t have air conditioning, leading at least one visitor to overheat. She told a reporter she finally found relief at a baptism tent, where she took a dip to cool down.

Even without the heat, the fair is coming across as tacky, with empty booths and a lack of energy. The food is expensive, reviews are abysmal, and people aren’t coming, enraging the president. When it hasn’t been hot, it’s been raining. America’s 250th anniversary was already going poorly thanks to Trump, and now the weather may cement the once-in-a-lifetime event’s status as a failure.

Yet another Republican lawmaker is missing in action.

Florida Representative Neal Dunn’s office told Punchbowl News Thursday that he won’t be voting unless Republican leadership says they need him.

Donald Trump put the 73-year-old lawmaker on blast in March, prematurely revealing at a White House event that Dunn was suffering from a terminal heart problem and would be “dead by June.”

“Congressman Neal Dunn of Florida had had some real health challenges, and it was very serious, and had had a pretty grim diagnosis,” House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted at the event at Trump’s behest. “I mentioned it to the president. I said, ‘Congressman Dunn is a real champion and a patriot because he’s still coming to work, and if others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire.’”

“What was the diagnosis?” Trump pressed.

“It was—I mean, I think it was a terminal diagnosis,” Johnson said.

“He would be dead by June,” Trump interjected, before Johnson confessed, “That wasn’t public.”

Dunn has not been on Capitol Hill since June 11 and has so far missed 11 votes, according to his voting record. Nonetheless, he has not announced any plans to truncate his time in office. In January, Dunn released a statement indicating that he would not seek reelection, though the former Army surgeon is apparently not planning to formally bow out before the end of his term.

Dunn has a bad track record with missing votes. Since he entered the House in January 2017, Dunn has missed 246 of 4,992 roll call votes. That means the septuagenarian has missed at least 4.9 percent of the votes that took place during his term, according to an analysis by Govtrack.us, which is much more than the median of 2.1 percent missed by other representatives.

But he’s not the only Republican who’s been missing in action. Representative Tom Kean Jr. was absent from Congress since March 5, sparking a Washington brouhaha that lasted until Tuesday, when he suddenly appeared before the House floor to share that his inexplicable multimonth absence was due to depression. Notably, Kean has voted repeatedly to block paid sick leave for his constituents.