Conservative media host Grant Stinchfield is suggesting that left-wing saboteurs are behind the algae that turned the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool green, barely a week after President Donald Trump's multimillion-dollar overhaul of the landmark.
In a video posted to X, Stinchfield stood beside the murky, green-tinted water and floated the idea that something sinister was at work.
"President Trump fixes the reflecting pool and a week later it's green again, loaded with algae," he wrote. "Sabotage… Vandalism? I believe it is."
He pushed the theory further in a video, telling the camera the water had been "crystal clear blue" and gesturing at the surface. "Is it nefarious? I tend to think so," he said, claiming unnamed actors "want Trump to fail."
Stinchfield tied it straight to politics. "The left can't stand Trump, American greatness and his quest to make DC beautiful again," he wrote. "What a shame!"
He claimed, "They're pumping something into this. It is back to green!"
The official explanation is far less cinematic. The Interior Department has said the green tint is residual algae left in supply lines that sat dormant for roughly eight weeks during construction — a routine byproduct of restarting the system, with crews already working to clear it.
Algae has long plagued the shallow, sun-baked pool, which is prone to blooms in summer heat and stagnant water. The renovation, which included repainting the basin and adding new filtration meant to curb that very problem, wrapped only recently, with the pool refilled around early June.
So a freshly refilled, sun-exposed pool in a Washington summer turned green, as it has many times before. Stinchfield's verdict, delivered to more than 100,000 viewers: an inside job.