President Donald Trump chose to spend the last day before the 2026 midterm elections delivering a speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, for another round of complaints about his botched effort to renovate the national landmark.
During the speech, Trump joked about renaming the pool after himself, proclaimed "this is a giant piece of pool," and reiterated his old lie that the Reflecting Pool job only needed to be redone because of protesters "vandalizing" it, when in fact the lining wasn't installed correctly in the first place.
Political observers on social media had a field day with the speech.
"Trump has abandoned his message about Jon Husted's ass and is instead making lying insanely about 'vandalism' at the Reflecting Pool his closing argument," wrote S.V. Dáte of HuffPost.
"Trump is at the Reflecting Pool calling it beautiful — his own DOJ admitted it was a rushed & botched install, NOT vandalism," wrote former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen. "You paid for that job. Davey Hearn, a 20-year park volunteer, got a bogus felony charge."
"In a bizarre two years, it really is surreal to see the president close the midterms holding up printouts to perpetuate a lie about the reflecting pool being vandalized," wrote Sam Stein of The Bulwark, calling it "proof that he is marching to the beat of his own drum."
"I can’t believe he is actually making his closing argument speech about the reflecting pool renovations," wrote podcaster and former national security staffer Tommy Vietor. "This is a bad resistance lib joke come to life."
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