Transcript: Trump Reflecting Pool Tirade Goes Awry as Arrests Darken (Daily Blast podcast transcript, published June 29, 2026)

[This is a transcript of the June 29, 2026 episode of The Daily Blast podcast, host Greg Sargent interviewing former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori. Dated well before the August ripple-dismissal news; used here only for the on-the-record June claim and analysis.]

Sargent: Trump has posted on Truth Social that six people have been arrested and seven others have gotten citations — some, he says, for cutting a 350-foot gash in the pool's sealant with a knife or with razors. But there doesn't seem to be any clear evidence of these arrests.

The New York Times just got a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, which handles prosecutions in D.C. All they said was, We are aware of citations being issued, meaning by the Park Police. But the U.S. attorney's office provided no specifics, no number of people given citations. Here's how the Times put it: "No records of arrests or citations have been produced by the administration or law enforcement officials to support the president's claims."

Khardori: My first suspicion is that they don't want to put out information that would contradict the president's claims about what's happening there... So we should infer that the facts would not reflect well upon them if they were being forthright about them.

Khardori: I don't believe him. I'll just be honest, I don't believe him. At a minimum, I'm unwilling to take his word for it. And I will not take his word for it unless and until the government produces records from the criminal system that would back it up. Thus far they're not doing that. What I infer from that... is that if they were to produce it, it wouldn't corroborate the president's claims. It would be extraordinarily embarrassing.

Donald Trump (voiceover, quoted in the transcript): They tried to destroy it. They cut it up with a box knife and tried to destroy it... They're vandals. They've caught six of them, I guess, maybe more... These people ripped a scar 350 feet long through the side of the Reflecting Pool. These are the people that want to destroy our country.