Interior Secretary Doug Burgum clashed with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday over damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., saying officials can prove vandals cut the newly installed liner after she questioned whether the Trump administration’s renovation work had failed ahead of the Fourth of July celebration.
Bash asked Burgum whether he was “100% sure” vandalism caused the damage and whether he could prove it.
“Absolutely you can,” Burgum said. “And as we drain it, we’ve got all the photographs we can see.”
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Bash pressed Burgum on whether officials had photographs of “a person or people cutting a 300 or 350 ft gash” in the bottom of the pool.
“Dana, I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question… this is an industrial liner,” Burgum said.
Burgum said the material installed in the pool was not paint, comparing it to the sprayed-on liner used in pickup truck beds.
“Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally, literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off,” Burgum said. “This is like a strong material, and it’s the size of eight football fields.”
Burgum said the pattern of the damage showed it had been deliberately cut.
“The only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it,” Burgum said.
The secretary said the pool itself had been fixed after leaking tens of thousands of gallons of water per day.
“The pool itself, it’s not leaking,” Burgum said. “It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day. It’s finally been fixed by President Trump and the American flag blue is working perfectly.”
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Burgum said the broader issue was the condition of the nation’s capital before the renovation work.
“The real scandal is about the fact that the state of our capital was in such total disrepair,” Burgum said. “No one was reporting about the pro-Hamas graffiti.”
Bash noted that the Reflecting Pool was closed during the Fourth of July celebration.
“It was closed because it’s surrounded by fireworks,” Burgum said. “It’s closed every year on the Fourth of July.”
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Burgum said the fencing around the pool was tied to the fireworks display and would come down afterward.
“You can’t have people around fireworks when they’re being set up,” Burgum said. “The fence was there because of the fireworks.”
Bash also asked whether President Donald Trump’s motorcade could have damaged the coating when it crossed the pool in May.
“No,” Burgum said. “He didn’t take the Beast. We were driving in a… Cadillac Escalade.”
Burgum said the administration would use the same company to repair the damage rather than seek new bids.
“We’ll use the same company because they did a fantastic job,” Burgum said. “Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair.”
The Associated Press reported Sunday that Burgum said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week and that repairs would not be opened to new contractors. The report claimed Green Water Solutions received a $1.7 million contract for a water-purification system, while Atlantic Industrial Coatings received a $14.7 million contract to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.
