If you turn on Fox News, you can watch White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announce that six arrests have been made of individuals who allegedly vandalized Reflecting Pool. If you go to CBS's social media, you can watch reporter Ed O'Keefe tell President Donald Trump that, actually, there is no evidence of vandals causing a 250-foot gash in Reflecting Pool. The next day, on YouTube, you can watch Trump stand under an umbrella and explain to reporters that, in fact, it's a 350-foot slit — 100 feet longer than he'd originally claimed — "in the form of lots of little slits" and also, "it's a shame."
In case you are a latecomer to Reflecting Pool, here's a recap of what's happened so far this season: In April, Trump announced plans to refurbish the National Mall's historic Reflecting Pool in time for the country's 250th anniversary, saying that under the watch of previous presidents it had become "filthy." He awarded a no-bid contract to a company that had worked on his own swimming pools and spent several weeks bragging that the finished product would last for decades: "If you had a knife, you can't even cut it."
Days after the renovations were completed, the pool began blooming with algae in mid-June. Neon green water spewed from hoses nearby. Interior Department workers commenced dumping gallons of hydrogen peroxide into the water. The following week, chunks of the Reflecting Pool's new sealant started peeling off and floating to the surface. Ducks were found dead in and around the pool. Trump began blaming vandals, saying the pool had been cut with "a knife of some kind."
On social media, you can watch law enforcement issue warnings to anyone who now tries to touch Reflecting Pool. Swedish newscaster Stina Blomgren briefly dips her hand in the water, and a member of the National Guard approaches: "Please refrain from touching the water. That will be the last time you do that — any time after that you will be detained."
On TikTok, you can listen to hydrogen peroxide experts, algae experts and conspiracy theorists explain what they think has gone wrong with Reflecting Pool. You can visit the Washington Monument's EarthCam, which offers a 24/7 live stream of Reflecting Pool. There, you can chat with around 60 other visitors at any given time who have all logged on to make sure nothing else happens to Reflecting Pool on their watch, even though, from this camera angle, any people surrounding Reflecting Pool are the size of dust mites.
A journalist named Emily Miller who calls herself "the running reporter," because she is also a certified personal trainer and frequently jogs while reporting, uploaded a series of photographs and clips to X that she said were proof of vandalism, but I watched that video at least five times, and I have no idea what she is talking about. The clips were mostly of workmen chatting and close-ups of rock.
Reflecting Pool has everything. It's a drama. It's a farce. It's a whodunit. It's a murder mystery. The victims are ducks. Reflecting Pool is entertainingly low stakes because it is not, for example, a war. The worst-case scenario is that the United States is out several million dollars and that Lee Greenwood has to sing "God Bless the U.S.A." at the "Rally to End All Rallies" — Is that a promise? — in front of a body of water that currently looks like why God Blessed Tetanus Shots.
It is also high stakes because it definitively proves something, but what it definitively proves apparently depends on your political persuasion. If you are partial to Trump's narrative, for example, it proves that one of the primary villains in this story is a 67-year-old former Olympian who competed for the United States in canoe slalom racing before deciding to turn to a life of Reflecting Pool crime. (David Hearn was on a bicycle ride, he later said, when he stopped by the Reflecting Pool and noticed a partially detached piece of liner. He said he reached down to feel it, at which point he was handcuffed by Park Police.)
To watch Reflecting Pool is to bear witness to both the behaviors of your government and of your fellow citizens. To see what they are willing to believe. Who they are willing to blame.
You can watch flashback footage of the presidential motorcade driving down the Reflecting Pool last month before it was refilled. If you are partial to a narrative different from the one offered by Trump, you can join armchair detectives speculating that perhaps it was this — multiton vehicles driving over a brand new surface before it had a chance to cure — that was more likely to cause the pool to fail than a 67-year-old on a bike ride. Who is to say?
We've been told that on the next episode of Reflecting Pool, the water is going to be emptied again.
Trump announced it on Truth Social earlier this week. "We will drain some of the water, either before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair."
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