Five Arrests Made in Connection with Alleged Reflecting Pool Vandalism
President Donald Trump has threatened legal consequences for anyone found guilty of derailing his efforts to Make America Beautiful Again.
According to CBS News, the U.S. Park Police have arrested five people in connection with alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., while another five individuals have received federal citations.
Trump threatened to punish the alleged offenders to the law’s fullest extent.
“Please remember that there is a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things — Which will be fully enforced!” the president wrote Monday on his social media platform Truth Social, according to NBC News.
𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗝. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 – 𝟬𝟵:𝟮𝟴 𝗔𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝟬𝟲.𝟮𝟮.𝟮𝟲
🚨President Trump just posted below that radical vandals singled out the restored Lincoln Reflecting Pool for a vicious attack with a huge gash, dumped toxins, and a hateful… pic.twitter.com/dNaE9uwn7n
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) June 22, 2026
Also in that post, Trump alleged that vandals had dumped chemicals into the Pool and given it a “300-foot-long gash.”
Then, later on Monday, the president told reporters that he had personally seen the enormous gash.
“I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently,” Trump said.
“You’ll see it in court,” the president replied when pressed for photographic evidence of the alleged vandalism, “but all you have to do is call the parks department, call the Department of Interior.”
Trump’s use of the word “violently” no doubt stemmed from his apparent belief in the alleged vandals’ malicious intent.
In fact, late Friday on Truth Social, the president connected reports of peeling paint in the Reflecting Pool to an incident earlier this month in which the numbers “86” and “47,” which together are widely interpreted as a call to eliminate Trump, were in the process of being chemically burned into the grass on the National Mall.
Among those arrested and detained on Friday was 67-year-old former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, according to CBS.
“I’m a curious citizen,” Hearn said in a phone interview about his decision to pause a lengthy bike ride, reach into the Pool and examine the peeling coating. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”
Of course, like everything else in the Trump Era, the Reflecting Pool renovation has morphed into a partisan political issue.
For instance, shortly after the renovation’s initial completion earlier this month, one Trump-hater on social media grudgingly admitted that the pool looked good.
A few weeks later, however, the Pool developed an algae problem.
Although a predictable development in light of the mostly stagnant water — not to mention a familiar problem at the Reflecting Pool in particular — the establishment media reported on the 2026 algae in a way it never did when then-President Barack Obama’s 2-year, $34 million renovation, completed in 2012, resulted in a substantially worse algae bloom.
In that same partisan spirit, NBC News interviewed four visitors to the pool Sunday. All four had at least one negative thing to say about Trump’s renovation efforts.
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