Tuesday, June 23, 2026
It’s an iconic landmark built for reflection, but Donald Trump hates what he sees. Things have now gone from bad to worse for the president's botched Reflecting Pool, with contractors admitting on Tuesday that the pool liner — peeled, cracked and covered in algae — won’t be fixed before Independence Day celebrations.
Mind you, Deflection Don insists the collapse of his much-hyped project isn’t the result of bad planning, questionable contracting, or blue paint baking in Washington’s summer heat. Instead, he claims vandals entered the pool with a box cutter and sliced a 350-foot gash into it. But in order to see the proof, Trump tells us, we’d have to ask the National Parks Service or Interior Secretary Doug Burgam. We did. So far: radio silence.
Not surprisingly, critics aren’t buying it. “Nobody is vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, and Trump knows it,” quipped novelist Stephen King. “This is a visible example of his corruption — a no-bid contract to some crony followed by sky-high cost overruns, and shoddy construction to boot. Classic Trump: I didn’t f**k up, it was my enemies.”
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