Why Trump May Not Apologize for the Reflecting Pool Claims

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool appears green after an algae bloom in June 2026. — The New York Times reported that the contractor admitted fault in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool debacle. Source: Shutterstock

Published on: September 29, 2026 at 9:26 am

Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which the Trump administration handed a no-bid contract to redo the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, admitted in internal government documents that its employees were responsible for installation errors and design flaws that caused the pool’s blue liner to peel, contradicting the president’s claims of vandalism. The contractor’s reports and National Park Service logs confirm that the damage stems from the contractor’s poor project execution rather than vandals, according to The New York Times.

However, according to Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, who moderated the panel “The Framers of 1776 vs. The Nation’s Leadership In 2026; Is the Vision Now Vivid or Blurred?” at the 2026 AOM Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, one cannot expect U.S. President Donald Trump to revise his accusations of vandalism. Sonnenfeld has coauthored the book Trump’s Ten Commandments: Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox with Steven Tian, also of Yale.

“Despite all evidence, Trump insists it was a vandal who damaged the reflecting pool, and a 67-year-old former Olympic kayaking or canoeing superstar Davey Hearn, who walks by it winds up getting blamed as being the vandal who destroyed it all,” Sonnenfeld said. “It turns out, once they drained it and inspected it, even his acolyte, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who he installed as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was smart enough and honest enough to say, ‘Wait a minute! It’s all through the middle of the pool. Nobody went in. There’s no vandal in there, and we have no footage of this alleged vandalism. That was shoddy work.’”

“So Trump’s furious at her now, even though she told the truth,” he said. “Meanwhile, he has Doug Burgum, who he appointed as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, saying, ‘Well, it was still vandalism.’”

“And so Trump will try to find ways of deflecting blame for the reflecting-pool debacle, try to find villains or scapegoats, blame somebody else, and that is a way of changing the subject.”

Author

Daniel Butcher

Daniel Butcher is a writer and the Managing Editor of AOM Today at the Academy of Management (AOM). Previously, he was a writer and the Finance Editor for Strategic Finance magazine and Management Accounting Quarterly, a scholarly journal, at the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). Prior to that, he worked as a writer/editor at The Financial Times, including daily FT sister publications Ignites and FundFire, as well as Crain Communications’s InvestmentNews and Crain’s Wealth, eFinancialCareers, and Arizent’s Financial Planning, Re:Invent|Wealth, On Wall Street, Bank Investment Consultant, and Money Management Executive. He earned his bachelor’s degree, Cum Laude, from the University of Colorado Boulder and his master’s degree from New York University. You can reach him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.

View all posts