CNN’s Kaitlan Collins threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that his renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was vandalized amid concerns about its algae bloom outbreak, peeling paint and dead ducks.
On CNN’s “The Source With Kaitlan Collins” Tuesday, Collins resurrected a receipt of Trump boasting last month about how durable his controversial, multimillion-dollar renovations have made the pool — so much so that he directly bragged that a knife wouldn’t even be able to damage it.
“This will last for at least 50 years. You’ll never have a leak,” the president said in the clip. “It’s very strong. You couldn’t, if you had a knife — I don’t want to give anybody ideas. If you had a knife, you can’t even cut it. So strong, so powerful, it’s like powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed.”
Before playing that clip, she played a clip of Trump telling reporters Wednesday that defacers did some “real horrible stuff” to the new “American flag blue” lining — without providing any evidence to back up his claims.
“Somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good. And then they cut it 200- 350-foot slip in the form of lots of little slips, a real horrible stuff,” he said in the clip.
Trump made the same vandalism claims in a Tuesday Truth Social post.
Collins quickly shot down Trump’s mixed messaging — and unlike the president, she actually provided proof.
“That’s what the president argued today,” she said after the footage played in a clip obtained by Mediaite. “There are not pictures or video, from the Interior Department officials, or the Park Police, showing someone making a cut in the pool.”
Collins further shut down Trump’s claims by citing reporting from The New York Times, in which the outlet obtained government documents that revealed there was no indication that peeling paint and algae blooms were caused intentionally.
Collins noted that Trump said in his aforementioned Tuesday Truth Social post that the pool will be partially drained “either immediately before or after the Fourth of July” for repairs. In that same post, Trump also claimed that six people have been arrested and seven have been cited “for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool.”
Collins then took a dig at the president by noting that he’s been posting about the Reflecting Pool as much as he is about Iran this week.
“That announcement was one of four posts that we saw from the President, about the Reflecting Pool, since about 8:00 p.m. last night, almost as many as he has posted about Iran,” Collins added.
Collins’ pulling receipts about Trump’s contradictory statements came after a HuffPost reporter who walked around the pool Monday did not spot a gash.
Trump followed up his Truth Social post on Wednesday by posting an image that supposedly showed the pool before it was recently refilled with water.
“This is the hard rubber surface — No Paint — Before the Vandals cut and pulled it apart!” he wrote on Truth Social.