(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum bolstered President Donald Trump’s insistence that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was vandalized — even after the Department of Justice admitted that wasn’t the case.
Burgum posted Saturday, “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool.”
He continued:
Some of these acts were even caught on camera. We also provided the U.S. Attorney’s office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence they asked for in the requested time line detailing each area of damage at the pool.
The Reflecting Pool is part of the Lincoln Memorial and dates back to 1922.
@POTUS cares deeply about protecting our sacred national monuments and his leadership has led the restoration of our Nation’s Capital by Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Again.
Intentional damage done to the Reflecting Pool is no different than defacing any one of our other national monuments.
We won’t back down to deranged people who want to destroy, deface, or degrade our monuments.
Burgum’s post was in response to Trump’s raging at U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro after she admitted in court papers that the damage to the pool’s lining “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor” and “the rush to complete the project.”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! President DJT”
In a follow-up post, Trump included a video of tourists dipping their hands in the pool.
“Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool. The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!” Trump wrote.
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