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 lawโs fullest extent.
โPlease remember that there is a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things โ Which will be fully enforced!โ the president wrote Monday on his social media platform Truth Social, according to NBC News.
๐๐ผ๐ป๐ฎ๐น๐ฑ ๐. ๐ง๐ฟ๐๐บ๐ฝ ๐ง๐ฟ๐๐๐ต ๐ฆ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฃ๐ผ๐๐ โ ๐ฌ๐ต:๐ฎ๐ด ๐๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ง ๐ฌ๐ฒ.๐ฎ๐ฎ.๐ฎ๐ฒ
๐จPresident 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 hatefulโฆ pic.twitter.com/dNaE9uwn7n
โ 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 โ300-foot-long gash.โ
Do you support Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool?
Then, later on Monday, the president told reporters that he had personally seen the enormous gash.
โI saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently,โ Trump said.
โYouโll see it in court,โ the president replied when pressed for photographic evidence of the alleged vandalism, โbut all you have to do is call the parks department, call the Department of Interior.โ
Trumpโs use of the word โviolentlyโ no doubt stemmed from his apparent belief in the alleged vandalsโ 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 โ86โ and โ47,โ 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.
โIโm a curious citizen,โ Hearn said in a phone interview about his decision to pause a lengthy bike ride, reach into the Pool and examine the peeling coating. โI reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.โ
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 renovationโs 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 โ not to mention a familiar problem at the Reflecting Pool in particular โ the establishment media reported on the 2026 algae in a way it never did when then-President Barack Obamaโs 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 Trumpโs renovation efforts.
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