Efforts to repair President Donald Trump’s botched renovation project have exposed just how shoddy the work truly was.
A video shared on X on Wednesday by photographer Joe Flood captured workers pulling up “chunks” of loose blue sealant as they power washed the basin of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The workers could be seen pulling up flaps of the “American Flag Blue” liner with their bare hands, while scraps of damaged sealant were jostled loose by the power washer.
The White House deferred questions from the Daily Beast to the Interior Department, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
The basin of the reflecting pool was drained once again as crews began efforts to repair its cracked liner last week, according to The Washington Post.
Trump, 80, has repeatedly claimed that his peeling pool is the result of vandals who cut a gash hundreds of feet long into its liner, but even his own prosecutors disagree.
Jeanine Pirro, the president’s top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., dropped charges against former Olympian David Hearn after determining that the pool’s damage was likely caused by a “botched installation” by the contractors.
The Department of Justice had also dropped misdemeanor charges against three others accused of vandalizing the pool.
Trump said that he was “very disappointed with Jeanine Pirro,” adding that she “folded like an umbrella.”
“There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” Trump later wrote on Truth Social.
While repairs have been underway, new signs were placed on the fences surrounding the pool, stating that crews were ‘repairing areas damaged by vandals’ and blaming past administrations for tourists being unable to enjoy it.
“Since 1922, prior administrations have neglected this iconic landmark, evidenced most recently by more than half of the pool’s pipes being clogged and the sidewalks and granite coping stones being filthy dirty,” the sign reads. “The Reflecting Pool will remain drained while this work proceeds so that it can truly reflect the beauty, dignity, and grandeur of our nation’s capital.”
Work on the historic attraction has continued on and off since June, as Trump’s idea to restore the pool by painting it “American Flag Blue” failed miserably. Instead, the renovation spurred the pool’s largest algal bloom in years.
The same contractor who worked on the initial renovation, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, was hired again for the repairs, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told CNN that “they did a fantastic job.”
