I think it was a week ago when I said the Reflecting Pool story would likely continue for exactly as long as it could be used by progressives and the media (but I repeat myself) to dunk on President Trump. The moment it’s no longer an embarrassment, it’s no longer a story the media wants to tell. And we may have reached that point today.
After nearly a week spent cleaning up algae and making repairs, the pool was looking pretty good this morning. This guy is a reporter for TMZ who covers Washington.
I was assured (by a big dog) that the Reflecting Pool will stay this way permanently 😍 pic.twitter.com/VR6g2CRZwp
— CHARLIE COTTON (@hicharliecotton) June 24, 2026
He’s right of course. If you say the pool looks bad when it does then you ought to say it looks good when it does. And I think you could extend that a bit more by saying, if you’re going to dunk on Trump when he gets it wrong, they you ought to give him some credit when he gets it right. But that’s not what’s happening.
On the contrary, Jim Acosta produced this extremely embarrassing video at the Reflecting Pool which he posted earlier today.
Went looking for the 300 foot “slit” or “slits” in the reflecting pool Trump keeps lying about. Didn’t find any of that. But did find plenty of signs the paint on the bottom of the pool has simply disintegrated. My latest pool report. pic.twitter.com/kfp71lAkQC
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 24, 2026
Acosta is mocking the idea of vandals as if a) it didn’t happen in this same location about two weeks ago.
The Americans tried to cover up the 8647 burned in to the lawn in DC and it’s back 🤭 pic.twitter.com/VEsJxNO23E
— Canada 4 Europe 🇨🇦🇪🇺 (@Canada4Europe) June 20, 2026
More to the point, I posted a video yesterday which Emily Miller says included images of damage to the seal along the sides of the pool. According to her, the damage was discovered just a day after the work was completed and the workers have no doubt it was someone with a knife.
I guess I expect Acosta to make some effort but really why would he start now. His schtick was always being an anti-Trump clown and that’s all he’s going to do now that he’s been cut loose by CNN.
Finally, the Washington Post managed to publishe at least two more stories about the pool in the past 24 hours. This one blames the algae on climate change.
In his battle to clean the murky waters of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, President Donald Trump has tried draining, painting, hydrogen peroxide and what the Interior Department describes as “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology.” But he has seemingly overlooked two of the most important factors that experts say are driving unsightly — and sometimes dangerous — profusions of algae: pollution and climate change.
The author specifically blamed the algae growth on fertilizer in the water, but seems to get some of the details wrong.
Since 2012, the pool has been filled from the Tidal Basin, which in turn is fed by the Potomac River. Both water bodies contain excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous — the nutrients most loved by algae — and are designated as “impaired” by the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning they don’t meet basic water quality standards for swimming, fishing and supporting aquatic life…
The pool was refilled on June 4 using the same nutrient-rich Tidal Basin water as before.
The spate of warm, sunny days that followed — June so far has been about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal, according to the National Weather Service — provided ideal conditions for the photosynthetic creatures to multiply.
It’s true that the pool has been refilled from the tidal pool since 2012, but that’s not how it was refilled earlier this month. In fact, multiple reports have indicated it was refilled using the city’s water system. And apparently Washington, DC intentionally adds phosphates to the water in order to prevent lead from old pipes from winding up in the water. I found an old document from 2004 where the city explained why it was doing this.
This summer the Washington Aqueduct, which provides drinking water to DC and several other jurisdictions, plans to add orthophosphate to the drinking water treatment process in order to address the elevated concentration of lead in the tap water in some District homes…
Orthophosphate is a commonly used “corrosion inhibitor” that is added to finished drinking water. Orthophosphate works by forming a protective coating inside of lead service line pipes and fixtures in customers’ homes to help prevent lead from leaching into drinking water. It may take six months or longer for the reduction in lead levels to occur. Orthophosphate is a food-grade chemical and is generally recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the EPA.
All of that is correct and the city is apparently still treating its water with orthophosphates to this day for the same reason. And while this may indeed have caused the algae bloom earlier this month, it was not the result of pollution but of intentional city planning. In other words the phosphates weren’t there by accident, they were put there on purpose.
The other Post story is by Philip Kennicott and also seems a bit dated as of this afternoon.
When I visited the Lincoln Memorial last week, I was pleasantly surprised that the old magic still works, even with the pool looking like a kale smoothie. People had come to see Lincoln, to stand where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, where Marian Anderson’s voice soared above hate and division on a spring day in 1939. The view from the memorial’s inner chamber is one of the finest man-made vistas in the world, full of promise and possibility and just enough of the sublime to make you think that perhaps humanity can rise above tawdry things like greed and cruelty and chaos…
So much depends, in life and in government, on the collective agreement to preserve and protect, to leave beautiful things alone if they are self-sufficient in their beauty. Collectively, we can stand back and let everyone enjoy it.
It only takes one person immune to the magic to disturb the image. And Donald Trump knew a pool guy.
Just more dunking based on things that were happening last week. The pool may be looking great this afternoon but you won’t hear about that from the Washington Post. Will Kennicott in particular ever mention it? I wouldn’t bet my lunch money on it, much less my life savings.
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