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Efforts to repair the peeling liner on the freshly renovated Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool won’t have concluded by the Fourth of July celebrations, Politico reports.

“It will not be before the celebrations, that’s for sure,” Francois Rivard, vice president of Rhino Linings, the company that supplied the waterproof coating, told Politico in an interview yesterday. “It would be up to [the National Park Service] to tell you exactly when they plan … but it’s in a matter of weeks, not years.”

Per my colleague Rachel Leingang, the reflecting pool drama has thrown a spanner in the works for Trump’s plans to complete several “beautification” projects around Washington in time for the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations next month, with his ill-fated $14m attempt to renovate the reflecting pool – including repainting the floor of the pool “American flag blue” – thwarted by algae, peeling paint and a ballooning price tag.

Trump has acknowledged “real problems” with the site, which he said he had examined himself, this week. But he has not acknowledged any issues with the renovation he ordered, instead blaming the ongoing saga on “vandals”, who he claimed had taken “some form of knife or blade” and delivered a 250ft gash into the pool’s facade.

He was still posting about this yesterday, with the alleged damage morphing into a “300 foot long gash”.

Reporters at the Washington Post who visited the pool on Sunday, could see no evidence of such damage, it reported, despite Trump’s claims.

Trump also claimed that unidentified vandals had poured “corrosive and destructive chemicals” into the pool. Contractors would probably have to drain the water to do repairs, he said.

Government workers were seen pouring hydrogen peroxide into the water to tackle the algae.

Five people had been arrested for vandalizing the pool and another five were issued federal citations as of Saturday, CBS News reported yesterday, citing an unnamed administration official.

It’s not clear if any committed acts of vandalism. Washington Post reporters witnessed people interacting with police after pulling objects from the water. Peeling paint has been floating on the surface at times.

Trump said over the weekend that contractors “will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water” to repair the pool.

“Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I just inspected it, and could only say to myself, and those gathered around me, WOW, who would do such a thing? SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE! We will fix it?”

Meanwhile, an interior department spokesperson told this morning’s Politico Playbook that no events around the reflecting pool have been canceled. [Yet].