Snopes.com4%
Did Trump's motorcade leave tire tracks in reflecting pool? What photos show 8%
By Jordan Liles5%
7/14/2026, 4:53:03 PM
Topics: Fact Check
BS Summary: This article contains 1 faulty reasoning type, including Ad Hominem, with Ad Hominem as the most egregious example at 2.2% saturation with 20 hits. Analysis detected 20 faulty-reasoning hits from 896 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.1% and a BS Rank of 8% (14,524 of 15,660 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 92.70% of the article peer group.
In the days after the July Fourth holiday celebrating 250 years of American independence, crews drained Washington's Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for the second time in 2026 to begin repairs just weeks after the completion of a project U.S.
President Donald Trump's administration spearheaded aiming to clean the pool and then paint it a color Trump dubbed "American flag blue."
Following an earlier draining in April, algae formed and turned the reflecting pool green.
Law enforcement officials then arrested multiple people over alleged vandalism, with Trump purporting vandals had cut a "350-foot gash" in the pool's side.
Following the reflecting pool's July draining, social media users began claiming new photos showed tire tracks on the pool's surface.
Users said Trump's motorcade tour — in which multiple vehicles drove through the drained pool on May 7 — left behind the supposed markings.
For example, on July 13, an X user posted (<a href="https://perma.cc/9YWM-AVDE">archived</a>) a photo, facing east from the pool's northwest corner toward the Washington Monument, purportedly showing tire tracks visible along the full length of the reflecting pool's north side.
The user wrote, "Reflecting Pool drained again, revealing tire tracks from Trump's convoy…vandalism MY A**!!!"
<strong>(@bling_momma accessed via X)</strong>
Other users widely shared the rumor on Bluesky (<a href="https://perma.cc/Y9UK-4CEC">archived</a>), Facebook (<a href="https://perma.cc/TQH2-3GL8">archived</a>), Threads (<a href="https://perma.cc/YXA4-2MY8">archived</a>), TikTok (<a href="https://perma.cc/FWV7-32PU">archived</a>) and X (<a href="https://perma.cc/UT54-WNQN">archived</a>).
In short, this rumor was not true.
A close study of the claim found the photos users shared of the reflecting pool were genuine and showed no signs of artificial intelligence or other digital manipulation.
However, users shared the pictures with false or misleading captions.
No evidence supported the idea that tires from Trump's motorcade caused the debris visible in the images.
For that reason, we've rated this claim miscaptioned.
One photo verified Trump's motorcade ride in early May did not drive near the reflecting pool's northwest corner.
Other pictures showed the motorcade heading back to the east side of the pool to depart.
Importantly, other vehicles and equipment facing north-to-south — not the direction of the alleged tire tracks — blocked the motorcade from being able to travel near the northwest corner.
Other photos from May 29, June 4, June 6 and June 7 confirmed workers cleaning and painting the reflecting pool drove numerous vehicles in the empty pool in the weeks *after* Trump's tour.
Additionally, an April post from the National Park Service showed workers using special vehicles with tires dubbed "Super Scrubbers" to help with the debris problem following the former draining.
We did not yet determine whether workers had used similar equipment again following the July draining, nor did we yet confirm whether such vehicles might leave behind debris lines on the left and right of their scrubbing mechanisms.
Snopes emailed the NPS and the White House to ask about the motorcade tire tracks rumor, as well as to inquire whether workers had used the same "Super Scrubbers" vehicular cleaning equipment in July.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers referred to the rumor as a "far-fetched, false claim made by losers on social media."
Photographer Joe Flood and additional evidence
Washington-based photographer Joe Flood took the mid-July photos users reposted with the rumor about tire tracks.
In an email, Flood told Snopes he's been taking photos in the nation's capital for nearly 20 years, including visiting the Lincoln Memorial site on "hundreds of different days, in all seasons, in all kinds of weather."
He said his visit in July led him to believe the lines weren't tire tracks but rather "irregular lines of debris":
I'm so glad that you reached out about this.
People have interpreted them as tire tracks but that's not what it looked like to me.
It's irregular lines of debris, not indentations in the pool liner.
It looks like what you'd find at the tide line at the ocean or if you were draining a really grimy bathtub.
The stuff that was left over after the water receded.
I'm guessing this occurred as they were draining the pool.
They shot off fireworks next to the pool on July 4th so a lot of burnt paper and ash ended up in the pool.
That's the debris in the pool.
Flood first shared the in-question photos (<a href="https://perma.cc/K7MH-FWY9">archived</a>) on July 13.
On the next day, Flood posted (<a href="https://perma.cc/X5CY-8972">archived</a>) a wide view of the drained reflecting pool, saying he could not locate the long "gash" Trump mentioned when he posted about alleged vandalism.
A close study of the photo found the debris lines on the north (left) side closely mirrored the lines on the south (right) side, further lending credibility the lines formed naturally or from cleaning equipment.
Flood shared other photos on the same day, some facing west and others east.
Other users posted videos clearly showing close views of debris either stuck to the bottom of the reflecting pool or flying around in the wind.
Crews reportedly clean the reflecting pool on an annual basis.
Past cleaning resulted in similar views of debris in 2022, for example.
Other photos from 2022 and 2025 show what tire tracks from vehicles — in this case apparently workers' cleaning equipment — would look like.
For further reading, we previously investigated whether a video showed a Fox News reporter calling the reflecting pool's green, algae-infested water the color blue.
Analysis
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