Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta was insulted by the White House after questioning Donald Trump's claim that vandals targeted the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/jim-acosta-donald-trump-062526-54a72fbc61b143f1ab4f8aeb76eb07b7.jpg "Jim Acosta, U.S. President Donald Trump")
Credit: Jim Acosta/X; Anna Moneymaker/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- The White House slammed longtime CNN journalist Jim Acosta for pushing back against President Donald Trump’s claim that vandals had desecrated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
- In a post by the Trump administration’s official rapid response account, the White House called Acosta “one of the dumbest individuals” after he sought to debunk Trump’s statements in a social media video
- The Reflecting Pool underwent a $14 million renovation in recent weeks but has faced issues since reopening, including a sudden algae bloom in the water and new coating that has already begun falling off
The White House had strong words for a former CNN anchor after he questioned President Donald Trump's claims surrounding the chaos at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
In a clip shared to X, journalist Jim Acosta could be seen walking around the edge of the Washington, D.C., Reflecting Pool in search of the 300-foot "slit" in the basin that Trump has described while blaming vandals for slashing the historic landmark. Trump has not provided any evidence that vandals are responsible for damaging the Reflecting Pool, which began shedding chunks of its new coating days after the expensive renovation.
Acosta did not locate the alleged vandalism, he said in his video, adding, "You can see just how much Donald Trump is lying about this, how out to lunch he is in all this."
"You can see whole sections where the paint has just come off of that bottom. It is just not there any more, in part because they did such a shoddy job down here that the paint has literally disintegrated in sections of this reflecting pool," the reporter continued.
"You can't see a slit — there are no slits, as he's been talking about. It's all a lie," Acosta claimed. "What he's saying is 100% pure bulls—."
The official White House Rapid Response account reposted Acosta's video with a fiery response, telling him, "Jim, you are truly one of the dumbest individuals to have ever existed. Please seek professional help."
Went looking for the 300 foot “slit” or “slits” in the reflecting pool Trump keeps lying about. Didn’t find any of that. But did find plenty of signs the paint on the bottom of the pool has simply disintegrated. My latest pool report. pic.twitter.com/kfp71lAkQC
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 24, 2026
Acosta previously served as CNN's chief White House correspondent during the Obama administration and Trump's first term. He exited the network in January 2025 after declining to move to a late-night show that would film in Los Angeles.
The CNN alum was known for his tough questions in the White House briefing room during Trump’s first presidency, and he was banned from the White House in November 2018 following a heated exchange with Trump. Acosta sued the federal government at the time, prompting a judge to rule that his White House press badge be reinstated.
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Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The pool's $14 million-plus renovation, which included an "American Flag Blue” resurfacing effort, took roughly six weeks to complete and has gone awry in the days since. Soon after the renovation was finished, the water turned bright green from algae and pieces of the new coating began to float to the surface.
Trump blamed the coating's problems on vandalization, writing on Truth Social over the weekend that “sick” and “deranged” people were the cause.
“The Reflecting Pool that you've heard so much about, which is so incredible, it's been gruesomely vandalized by thugs, bad people, but soon we'll be looking as beautiful as it looked just two weeks ago,” the president claimed in a speech on the National Mall, per NBC News.
He also claimed, without offering evidence, in a post on Monday that vandals had carved “a 300 foot long gash” and poured illegal chemicals into the water, promising “a 10 year prison sentence” that “will be fully enforced” to the supposed criminals. That supposed gash is the one that Acosta went looking for in his video that caught the administration's attention.
The president said that his administration would have to drain the pool and start over again as the new liner shed chunks of itself.
By Thursday, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to PEOPLE that the pool is now “crystal clear and reflecting perfectly.”
“President Trump generously spearheaded the restoration of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool – which has been plagued with algae and leaked 16 million gallons of water per year – to permanently fix the botched Obama ‘repairs,' ” Rogers added.
“Now that the long-awaited nanobubblers have been installed, the Reflecting Pool is crystal clear and is reflecting perfectly. Thank you, President Trump!” the statement concluded.
In his own speech on Wednesday, Trump said workers have now fixed the issues and gotten the Reflecting Pool looking "perfect already."