The Memo: Lincoln Pool furor reflects tensions of Trump’s second term

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Today's Top Stories - August 4, 2026

Today's Top Stories - August 4, 2026

Sometimes small battles are emblematic of much bigger wars. 

So it is with the furor that centers on President Trump and the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial.

In a literal sense, the pool is anything but small. Roughly 2,030 feet long and a little less than 170 feet wide, it is said to hold about 6 million gallons of water. 

Still, Trump’s effort to refurbish the pool hardly seems, in theory, the kind of thing that should make major headlines while his administration is at war with Iran, struggling at home with economic dissatisfaction, and polarizing the public with a hard-line approach to immigration.

But none of that has overshadowed the pool saga. It has mushroomed into a huge story in part because it draws so many strands of the Trump second-term story together.

Trump’s desire to wreak vengeance on perceived enemies, his cavalier approach to factual accuracy, his self-image as a master builder and his perennial competitiveness with other presidents are all part of the picture.

On Monday, Trump complained that his handpicked U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, had “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.” 

Pirro’s supposed sin was her move to dismiss her felony case against an Olympic canoeist, David Hearn. 

Hearn had initially been accused of damaging the reflecting pool by tearing at its lining. He was cast as one of the “vandals” whom Trump has blamed for the pool’s current state of imperfection.

Hearn had vehemently denied the charge. The motion to dismiss from........

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