John Oliver likened the current state of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., to “having sex with the Grinch” on Sunday. Last week tonight.
“There’s still another one of Trump’s pet projects falling through the cracks,” the host said of the $15 million pool renovation, which didn’t go as planned. The updates included fixing leaks, adding a blue liner and installing so-called “nano bubbles” meant to prevent algae. However, the pool has recently been affected by peeling paint and the return of algae to the surface.
On Sunday, Trump blamed vandals for the issues. “The Reflecting Pool is now in full use after sustaining significant damage from far-left criminals, vandals, and people who truly hate our country,” he said on Truth Social. “They cut off the bottom surface of an expensive and very strong waterproof padding, the color of the blue American flag, stuck their hands under the surface, and tore it off. Likewise, they cut and butchered a 350-foot long strip, with many individual 1- and 2-foot pieces, causing significant damage to this fine piece of art that, as of last week, was 100% free of leaks, and any of the other problems it has had since it was built in 1922. It has not been working properly until the past.” A week later, right after the Fourth of July, when we drain the water to address the damage caused by these “animals,” it will be in perfect condition again.
On his HBO show, Oliver showed a clip from NBC today A reporter asked a woman about the condition of the pool. “There’s a lot of green, and it smells really bad,” she said.
Oliver quips: “It’s never a great sign when the reviews for your national monument look exactly like a review for Sex with the Grinch: green, smelly, and well-connected though – three stars.”
Despite the lack of evidence, Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals are responsible for the algae as well as the long cut in the liner. “Trump continued to promote the vandalism conspiracy, and his supporters continued to try to promote it even when the evidence was laughably weak,” Oliver added, showing a clip of Fox News’ Jesse Watters broadcasting a blurry video of what he claimed might be two people vandalizing the pool.
“What do they do with their hands in the pool?” asked Watters. “Are they cutting the lining? Are they peeling the paint? And we don’t know if they’re committing a crime. They’ll probably tell you they dropped their wedding ring.”
“Is that the best you’ve got? That’s pathetic. As for ‘maybe they’ll tell you they dropped their wedding ring,’ yeah, maybe they did. Those people in the reflecting pool probably dropped their wedding ring after they left their wives for a 25-year-old co-worker. Jesse would know what that’s like,” Oliver answered. That last part was, of course, a reference to Watters’ then-married affair with his show’s 25-year-old producer, which led to his wife filing for divorce in 2018.
“It’s actually one of the many fun facts you can learn about on his Wikipedia page, where Waters mentioned in November 2024 that he wasn’t invited to his mother’s house for Thanksgiving,” Oliver continued. “I don’t blame his mother for that. She’s a child psychiatrist and she did her best; sometimes she gets a really bad one.”
Currently, the reflecting pool is surrounded by a chain-link fence erected by the National Guard.
“In fact, when you Google it now, you’ll find this label that says ‘temporarily closed,’” Oliver noted. “As if a Chipotle restaurant had been closed by the Department of Health after a dead rat was found in the guac.”
