Crews work on the coating of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 26, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Heuer
Journalist Jim Acosta filmed workers tearing chunks out of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool a day after President Donald Trump declared the landmark almost completely fixed.
In a video posted to X on Monday, Acosta reported while standing at the edge of the drained pool on the National Mall just hours after Trump made claims on Truth Social that were not supported by the personal inspection.
"You can see behind me that the reflecting pool is almost entirely empty," Acosta explained in the video, where he was forced to film work crews through gaps in a long black barrier that ran the length of the basin.
"I've just been spotting the workers down here on the no-bid contract for the Reflecting Pool," Acosta noted. "They are ripping up chunks of the bottom of this Reflecting Pool and throwing them away."
"Obviously trying to clean up after their own shoddy work, and not from vandals down here that they've been lying about over and over," he continued.
Trump had described a very different pool one day earlier, writing that "the Reflecting Pool is almost completely fixed," including its inflow and outflow pipes. Fewer than 20 hours separated that post from Acosta's video of an empty basin being torn up, according to the timestamps on both.
The repairs were supposed to be finished long before either post. The administration rushed the project to have the pool ready for the July 4 celebration of the country's 250th anniversary, according to a court filing later submitted by prosecutors and reported by NPR. Two months after that deadline, the basin still holds no water.
As Acosta was reporting his observations, freelance photographer Andrew Leyden photographed laminated paper signs zip-tied to the pool's construction fence. The notice on the signs carried the mastheads of the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior, under the heading "National Mall and Memorial Parks," according to Leyden's photographs.
Park Service staff and contractors are "repairing areas damaged by vandals," the sign tells visitors.
The sign goes on to blame earlier administrations, saying the landmark has been neglected since 1922. It cites clogged pipes, dirty sidewalks, and coping stones as the most recent evidence of that neglect.
The pool "will remain drained while this work proceeds," the sign says. That sentence gives no completion date, which is the opposite of what the president told the public a day earlier.
The government stopped arguing the vandalism theory in court on July 31, when federal prosecutors dropped their felony case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn.
Trump's vandalism claim also outlived all of the government's own cases for it, which federal prosecutors abandoned in court a month ago, NPR reported. Prosecutors instead blamed a "botched installation" by the administration's contractor.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro wrote that the Interior Department had misled her office into believing vandals caused nearly all the damage, according to UPI. Her office dropped misdemeanor charges days later against Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno, The Hill reported. The case against Hearn was also dismissed, and no charge has been reinstated since.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had personally vouched for the evidence of vandalism days before the dismissals, according to CBS News.
"I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that she "choked," CBS News pointed out. "U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should re-visit her hastily made decision," Trump later wrote on Truth Social.
Trump and his officials had promised the finished pool would look like a swimming pool or the Caribbean in time for the holiday, Acosta recounted in Monday's video.
The pool reopened in early June, and within days the water turned green. Park workers were filmed pouring hydrogen peroxide into the basin to kill the algae, and the new blue lining began peeling loose, according to Yahoo News.
The pool was drained a second time after the Fourth of July fireworks, Yahoo News reported. Trump blamed vandals at the time, claiming on Truth Social that someone had cut a 250-foot gash into the pool, Yahoo News reported.
The renovation was carried out under a no-bid contract worth nearly $15 million, UPI reported. Federal agencies normally must let companies compete for that work, but the rule can be waived in urgent situations, and the administration used that exemption to move quickly before the anniversary, an ABC investigation found.
The pool has leaked for decades, and the Obama administration spent close to $35 million on repairs beginning in 2010, ABC determined.
"And look at this — still empty, still an eyesore, still not what Trump promised to the American people for the 250th anniversary of this country," Acosta concluded. "Shameful."