Trump vents, ‘Where do these animals come from?’ in rant over WWII memorial vandalism after Reflecting Pool mess
President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out after an unidentified vandal defaced the National World War II Memorial with spray paint and dumped soap into its fountains, calling the perpetrators “animals” and vowing that investigators were closing in — while lumping the incident together with the Reflecting Pool case his own handpicked prosecutor told a federal court was not vandalism at all.
“Our beautiful World War II Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals. THERE CAN BE NO GREATER INSULT TO THOSE AMERICAN HEROES WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR II,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“First the Reflecting Pool, now this. We are on their trail! Where do these animals come from???” he added.
The president’s outburst came less than a day after U.S. Park Police were summoned to the memorial on the National Mall after red paint was poured across the walls and floor of the memorial’s Atlantic pavilion and a substance dumped into the fountain caused it to foam over. Some of the paint spelled out the phrase “Clean hands Dirty $.”
Investigators sealed off the memorial with police tape for much of the afternoon, turning away tourists. Crews arrived later in the evening to wash off the paint and clear the suds.
Video obtained by local television station WJLA appeared to show a woman spray-painting the memorial and adding soap to the fountain. Park Police have not released the footage and have not publicly identified a suspect — which sits awkwardly against Trump’s claim to be “on their trail,” and against his suggestion that there is more than one suspect to blame.
The Interior Department called the incident “an utter disgrace” in a statement, noting the memorial honors “the over 400,000 Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in WWII” and pledging that “we will find the person responsible for this disgusting act.”
The Friends of the National World War II Memorial said it was “deeply disturbed,” adding that “whatever the intent, defacing a place dedicated to the service and sacrifice of the World War II generation is unacceptable.”
Neither entity, however, went so far as to link what happened on Thursday to the controversy over the neighboring memorial’s water feature.
Trump has spent months insisting that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was vandalized despite his own Department of Justice claiming the opposite in court filings.
Last week, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, asked the District of Columbia Superior Court to drop charges against David Hearn, a former Olympic paddler who had been facing 10 years in prison for touching a section of pool liner that had detached from the bottom.
In her filing, Pirro wrote that the damage to the liner “was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” blamed “contractor error,” and told the court it would be “difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Trump’s response was to attack her. “She said there was no vandalism. There was tremendous vandalism,” he told NBC News last week. “So, she made a terrible mistake. I don’t understand why she did such a stupid thing.” He declined to fire her.
The pool had been resurfaced in dark blue and fitted with what the administration described as “advanced nanobubbler technology” to control the algae blooms that have long plagued it. The algae came back within weeks, and the new sealant began peeling away in chunks that floated to the surface. Trump initially said the job on the 2,030-foot pool could be finished quickly for $1.5 million. Federal spending records show his administration has since paid nearly $14.7 million, all of it to a single Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings LLC.
