People were already skeptical of President Donald Trump’s claims about the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but new photos are making what he said seem even less likely. Previously, after the reflecting pool renovation that Trump bragged about resulted in peeling paint and algae, he blamed “vandals” who allegedly cut large gashes into the pool.
But now that the pool has been drained and photos are circulating online, people don’t see these alleged “gashes” anywhere.
It also didn’t appear to be “American flag blue.”
The Reflecting Pool is empty now and there is no 300 yard long gash that’s been peeled up. That line running down the middle is for drainage and was there before pic.twitter.com/Z6VXQ7HuSf
— Joe Flood (@joeflood) July 14, 2026
After the pool was drained, tons of people took to social media to share photos and videos of a pool that looked very grey instead of blue and did not appear to have a gash in it. Liberal commentator Harry Sisson shared a photo on X and captioned it with, The reflecting pool has been drained and there’s no 300 foot gash in the paint like Trump said. Surprise! It doesn’t exist. Nobody is shocked.”
Photographer Joe Flood also posted a photo via the platform and captioned it with, “The Reflecting Pool is empty now and there is no 300 yard long gash that’s been peeled up. That line running down the middle is for drainage and was there before.”
And yeah, critics were not surprised.
Vandals sewed the gash back up to make Trump look bad. https://t.co/YIWINTwR7T
— ANNE LAMOTT (@ANNELAMOTT) July 14, 2026
When FactPost shared footage of the reflecting pool, also revealing “a splotchy floor and no visible ‘350-foot gash,'” some people pretended to be shocked. Jokingly, someone wrote, “The vandals came back and repaired it to cover their tracks! Those tricky vandals.”
And someone else said, “Are you saying our president is lying to us? Impossible!”
But, of course, even before the footage went viral, Trump critics believed his vandal story was simply meant to cover up his own mistakes. Another critic wrote, “Can this man say, just ONE time, ‘I made a mistake?'” So far, it doesn’t really seem like he can.
Even now that the pool has been drained, Trump has not changed his story.
Thank you @StevenCheung47 for posting the official footage of Donald Trump vandalizing the reflecting pool. pic.twitter.com/hII2BvxEje
— Paul Freid (@PaulFreid5) July 14, 2026
In a Truth Social post on July 13, he continued to blame “vandals” for damaging the pool. “We drained the beautiful ‘Reflecting Pool’ today in order to fix the scars and damage that was done by the Vandals two weeks ago,” he wrote. “We wanted to wait until after the July 4th Weekend. The slashes were 300 yards long, and the floor of the pool was cut and then pulled upward, with great force, by these thugs.”
He said the reflecting pool “will be refilled and put back into service soon,” and also threatened that “these Country hating sleazebags should pay a big price for the damage done.”
Some of the photos on social media appeared to show tire tracks in the pool, which sparked rumors that the damage had actually been caused by Trump’s motorcade ride through the drained pool in May. While it would’ve been especially embarrassing for Trump if he had caused the damage himself, Snopes reported that the photos actually appeared to show debris in the pool, not tire tracks.
READ NEXT: Karoline Leavitt Called The Media ‘Deranged’ Over The Reflecting Pool Story And It Backfired
