Man cited by authorities for simply touching water in Trump's Reflecting Pool: report

A man was cited by authorities merely for touching Trump's Reflecting Pool, according to a journalist's published video.

The Trump administration's defense of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has reached the point where reaching into the water can apparently earn you a ticket. Breaking-news reporter Oliya Scootercaster posted footage Saturday afternoon, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, showing a man seated on the grass at the pool's edge as a U.S. Park Police officer writes him up while a mounted colleague looms nearby. According to Scootercaster, the man said his citation was for putting his hand in the water.

The clip, which racked up more than 30,000 views within hours, captures the absurd security posture that has descended on a decorative basin. Officers on horseback now patrol the perimeter, and the cleanup crews share the space with a law enforcement presence better suited to a crime scene than a tourist landmark. All of it stems from a renovation the president ordered, a project that ran past $14 million and was supposed to leave the pool painted "American flag blue" in time for the country's 250th anniversary, only for the water to bloom green and the new surface to peel apart almost immediately.

This is at very least the second known enforcement action in recent days. Also recently, Park Police arrested David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian, on a misdemeanor charge after he touched a piece of paint that had already detached from the bottom. Hearn insisted he destroyed nothing. Now another visitor has reportedly been penalized for the crime of dipping a hand into a public pool.

Trump has spent the week insisting vandals and "radical left lunatics" are responsible for the mess, promising arrests and "years in jail." What the cameras keep documenting instead are federal officers apparently guarding green water as though it were a national treasure.