Remarks #2 transcript, Jun 24, 2026 (Donald Trump)

The Dutch King and Queen are—[ inaudible ].

I think Gianni has done a fantastic job.

And yes, he has asked me to hand out the Cup.

Suspected Vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool/District of Columbia Public Safety/Federal Law Enforcement Support in U.S. Cities

Mr. President, will the fencing around the Reflecting Pool will be down by July 4, or is that going to be——

The pool?

Yes, is it going to——

It's in great shape. No. Ready? Thugs—they just told me a little while ago—six have been arrested, and, like, six or seven are under investigation—they have pictures and everything else. They went to the bottom. And it's not a paint job. It's very expensive. It's not rubber, but it's like rubber. And they went down with probably a box cutter or a very sharp razor of some kind or a knife, and they cut, and then they started ripping it up.

You know why? Because they're sick people. And then the side of the pool, right at water level, they took razors and they started cutting this, you know, very expensive stuff. It's incredible stuff. It's beautiful. And it was so—and it's still beautiful. But we have one area where they cut it. It's still holding; it's not leaking. But they hurt it.

So, in about probably—maybe after July 4 or maybe before—I don't know—we'll let a little water out, because it's at the edge. They'll cut it, they'll replace it, and it will be as good as new.

But these people should go to jail for a long time. You know, there's a statute that I signed when I had my first term that if you do anything to hurt statues or monuments, fountains in Washington, DC, or Federal fountain—it's actually Federal, all over the country—but you go to jail for 10 years, and there's no shortcuts. In other words, it's not 5 years for good behavior. It's a very tough statute, and so tough that it really hasn't been used very much over the years.

But I used it when they had a problem in Washington, where they were trying to hurt—you know, the sickos were trying to hurt things. And I announced it—as soon as I announced it—read it, announced it, and I said 10 years for anybody, everybody dropped what they had, including ropes. They had ropes; they were tying ropes around Thomas Jefferson's head, Andrew Jackson right up there. They had a rope around his head on that incredible statue outside. As soon as I invoked it, everybody left.

That's still in play. They could go to jail for 10 years. They'd better be careful.

They have a gash on that beautiful pool. It's a reflecting pond. This is the most—a very expensive material. Then, on top of it, we did the—we did a much bigger job than we said we were going to do, because we did all the outer areas and everything else. We did a beautiful job. It's like a piece of glass. And for some reason, this disturbed the radical-left lunatics.

You know, the guy that—one of the guys, he's a member or a big payer to ActBlue. He's a big Hillary supporter. He's a big supporter of Sleepy Joe Biden.

No, these are—this is a very political thing. But as I understand it, six are under arrest. This was pure vandalism.

It's an amazing thing that we did. Don't forget, it hasn't worked properly since it was built, because it always leaked, in 1922. So it was built in 1922, so that's a hundred years—more—ago. It's never worked properly. I always say it had great potential, and I said in my first term, "I'm going to do something."

So, Biden and Obama, between the two of them, spent over $100 million. It was a disaster. Obama, because of the environment, took the water from the Potomac, and it was—it was horrible. It was bad. I don't want to have to tell you what happened, but it was really bad. You—you can read about it.

Biden, he didn't have any idea what the hell they were doing because he didn't know what—anything was happening. But they spent over $100 million. We spent 14 or 15, and a lot less than that, because a lot of these people work for the Parks department anyway, so, you know, they're going to work. So I would say a lot less.

And we put a great surface on. This is a world-class surface, and it looked beautiful. But they came in, and they cut it, and then they grabbed it, and they pulled it up. That's why it's all ripped. And who would even think of that? They're sick people. So I think they're in big trouble.

But here's the bottom line: We temporarily patched it. Even though we stopped the leak—it's so good that it—with all that damage they did, it's not leaking, and it looks really beautiful. I just had pictures taken. It's reflective. It's beautiful, like it did a week ago.

And then we're going to let a little water out because you have to let the water out to fix it. We're going to fix it, and then the water goes back in. It won't take long. We may do it before July 4, or we may do it just after July 4.

Now, we have it a little bit fenced off because we have a big fireworks display. And tonight, I'm making a speech, and people like my speeches, but I guess we're going to have a lot of people over there. But tonight we're going to have a lot of good entertainment. One of the greatest opera singers in the world. We think he's great. Lee Greenwood is going to be singing our favorite song. And we have a lot of great things, but I think I speak at about 7 o'clock tonight, so that's over at the Mall.

No, but the water looks great, but we will do the final fix-up. But just remember this: They took razor blades, 350 feet—coming from where he comes, they don't do that. They took—maybe a little bit. [ Laughter ]

They took razor blades——

No guarantees. [ Laughter ]

——and knives, and they cut patches like that, 350 feet long. A lot of them are, like, a foot, a foot, a foot. They cut the lining.

And there's pictures of the guy bending over. I don't know if anybody saw that, but there are pictures of the guy. And you say, "Who would do that?" Maybe it's Trump derangement syndrome.

You know, we fixed over 50 fountains and monuments in the city. The city is the safest it's ever been, ever. We have virtually no crime. We're crime free. When I came here—when we came here at the beginning, it was a horrible, crime-ridden city. And we have no crime—virtually no crime now.

Everything is fixed. We have new grass. We took a—miles—we took so much. Nobody has ever seen anything like—everything had graffiti on it. It's all gone. The tents all over the lawns, which were terrible, are all gone. The fences are all gone, because nobody goes on the lawns anymore. But we fixed those.

You know, grass has a life, just like people have a life. And we fixed the lawn, and it will be fixed.

Now, one of the other things—they did a job. Around the Reflecting Pool, we have a huge field of grass. They poured acid on the grass. The same people, I guess. They poured acid. So that's in the process. It killed—you know, acid kills grass quickly, so that's being fixed.

But the Reflecting Pool is great, and it's going to look beautiful.

It's so sad to see what they did. And then the fake news tries to say, "Oh, well, it didn't work." Of course, it worked. Everything I does work—what I do works. What I do best is build, and we fixed—I think it's 52 fountains—all over the city, they're talking about it.

But you know the biggest thing is, we have one of the safest cities. If you would have come here 2 years ago——

Mm-hmm.

——you had a good chance of being mugged; although, you're a very big guy. [ Laughter ] They would have mugged him up. They would have beat the hell out of him.

If Matt was with me, yes. [ Laughter ]

He would have said, "I'm never going back."

Now, you can walk with your beautiful wife, you can walk with your friends down to a—

Yes.

You know, we were losing all our restaurants. Nobody wanted to go out. Even if you got into the restaurant, they'd rob you when you were in. Now you can't get a—you can't get into a restaurant, but the restaurateurs are opening restaurants all over the city. I'm so proud of it.

Also, Memphis. Take a look at Memphis. Take a look at—in Louisiana, take a look at what's happened. What we've done in Louisiana with New Orleans is incredible. The Governor, Governor Landry, called me. They just had Mardi Gras. He said, "It's the safest Mardi Gras we've had in 75 years." It's great. We've done a good job.

And you know what? In Chicago, they had many murders over the last week. Many. We could solve—I could make Chicago, with this group of strong people—they're strong people, if that's okay.

You know, one thing we got from the Supreme Court: We have merit. So, if you have great students, great marks, great scores, great boards, you get into a good college. If you have bad, you don't get into a good college. In other words, it's based on merit. A tough decision for them. But that also applies to the military.

We have tough, tough people in the military. And the National Guard has done an incredible job in Washington, and my people have done an incredible job.

So, if you look at Memphis, crime is down 78 percent. I have a friend from Memphis. He was going to leave. And he called me, he said: "I've never seen anything like this. It's like a different city."

And also, in New Orleans, it's like people can't believe it.

I could do that for Chicago. I could—I'd love to do Chicago, because Chicago is potentially a great city, but you're going to lose it. It's got to be done. I could—and you know, we do something much more than they can do, because we take people out and bring them back to the country from where they came, where they came out of jails, where they're drug lords and drug dealers and people from mental institutions.

And I'd love to do it in Los Angeles, and I'd love to do it in New York City. I love New York. I'd like to see it—they had a lot of—a lot of problems in New York over the last couple of weeks. If we were there, they wouldn't have any of those problems.

And we removed the bad people from those cities so they'd never come back. Now, some liberal people probably don't like the sound of that. But 92 percent of crime is caused—in these cities, is caused by 2 percent of the people. I love that number, because it's easily solved. Now think of that: 92 percent of the crime in Washington was caused by 2 percent of the people.

We moved out almost 5,000 career criminals and people from other countries, and Washington now is one of the safest cities—I could say "on the planet," but let's just say "in the U.S." And it's beautiful now.

The Reflecting Pool, but we have 52—I think it's much more than that. It's going to soon be more than that. You see them opening up.

And my team has done an unbelievable job. Doug Burgum has been great—Department of the Interior—and his people, Greg, and all—I mean, these people, they're phenomenal.

But think of that. You work so hard; you get it open way ahead of July 4—July 4 was the key; and then somebody's in there with a knife, cutting it and ripping the floor out. It's terrible.

But the 350-foot gash in the side, it's a terrible thing.

Ready? Here, I'm going to end on this.

I'm so proud of Washington, DC. It's become one of the hottest cities in the world, but what is the hottest in the world is the United States of America. We have the hottest city.

And you know that. You were talking about that.

Two years ago, we were laughed at. We were a joke. We were a dead country. Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world.

Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good time. Thank you. Thank you very much.