WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that multiple people had been arrested in connection with alleged vandalism of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, including an Olympic canoeist, as the administration’s $14 million project to renovate the site has faced multiple setbacks.
In a pair of posts Saturday on Truth Social, Trump, without evidence, blamed vandals for the damage to the pool and said the alleged crimes could warrant “years in jail.”
“Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments,” Trump said in one post.
The 2,030-foot pool, which sits at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, has been beset by an algae bloom as workers refilled it after they gave the floor a new “American flag blue” coat of sealant. That coating has begun to peel off, with chunks appearing above the surface of the water.
Trump said that he had met with contractors Saturday and that much of the water might have to be drained to repair the pool’s floor.
“What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly,” Trump said in the second post.
“They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” he added. “They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
The renovation has been a pet project of the president’s and coincides with a broader effort to beautify Washington for the country’s 250th anniversary.
Despite efforts to clean the algae, the bloom and peeling coating continue to draw the attention of onlookers visiting the pool and surrounding monuments.
One of those onlookers was David “Davey” Hearn, a three-time Olympic canoeist, who told NBC News he was arrested and detained for five hours Friday after touching a piece of the detached coating.
Hearn, 67, said he made his way to the pool at the end of a bike ride “to satisfy my curiosity as a citizen of what was happening with all the algae and the peeling blue coating that I’ve been seeing in the news.”
“It was kind of stiff, stiff, but flexible, pretty rubbery. Didn’t feel brittle in any way,” Hearn said. “I didn’t remove, tear, rip, break or destroy any of it. The condition of the reflecting pool was the same after I stepped away from the water as it was before I got there.”
Hearn said the National Guard member who arrested him was unable to answer which federal law he had violated. The National Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“All of a sudden they were handcuffing me behind my back, and they hadn’t really told me what I was charged with,” Hearn said.
Earlier Saturday, Trump shared an article on social media about Hearn’s arrest.
The U.S. Park Police did not immediately respond to a request for information on any arrests.
As workers made their initial renovations in recent weeks, Trump mocked his predecessors over the past condition of the pool. Last month, Trump drove to the reflecting pool as it was under renovation to showcase his repairs.
“It never had the color people wanted, but now it’s going to have the great color,” he said at the time.
On Friday, workers could be seen scrubbing the pool as algae once again turned the water green.
