‘A Perfect Reflection of Trump’s Washington’

Taegan Goddard, two weeks ago at Political Wire:

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become an almost too-perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s presidency.

He promised a quick, cheap fix.

Instead, taxpayers got a no-bid project that ballooned to more than $14 million, delivered a freshly painted pool in “American Flag Blue,” and then promptly watched it turn green with algae as the new coating began to peel just days after it was supposedly finished.

That is Trumpism in miniature: a grand declaration, a flashy cosmetic overhaul, a politically connected contractor, and an immediate failure blamed on someone else.

Washington was supposed to be made beautiful again.

Instead, the Reflecting Pool now looks like a murky swamp — a fitting reflection of a capital overwhelmed by corruption and chaos.

Like I just wrote, it’s all kayfabe. It was never about actually improving the Reflecting Pool. All that mattered was that Trump said he would. The only real part was the taxpayer money funneled to a Trump crony. Just like how in pro wrestling, they charge fans real money for tickets. That’s real too.

Just like in pro wrestling, Trump has even explained it all away by pinning the blame on non-existent “vandals” who not only caused the weeks-old $14-million pool lining to peel, but somehow filled the pool with left-wing algae. When I was a kid there was a WWF wrestler named “Cowboy” Bob Orton. Orton broke his arm (for real) and was given a special dispensation to wrestle while wearing a cast. Orton’s arm was actually broken for 8 weeks, but it was kayfabe “broken” for an entire year — during which he used the cast to bash the heads of his opponents when the referee was “distracted”. Trump’s Reflecting Pool vandals are no more real than the doctors who vouched that Orton needed to wear a hard cast for an entire year. (Orton might as well be Trump’s next secretary of health and human services.)

Katie Rogers at The New York Times yesterday reported on how the entire city of Washington is now a fenced-in mess for the nation’s 250th birthday, the ostensible occasion for all these supposedly beautifying projects in the first place:

Presiding over a series of fenced-off or under-construction festivities ahead of the country’s 250th celebration is President Trump, who does not seem to mind that some of the nation’s most enduring symbols of liberty and expression are closed off and militarized.

“Good Morning from the Pool!” he wrote on social media late last week, posting an image of three soldiers standing guard at the pool’s edge, just in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

In his drive to “beautify” the nation’s capital, Mr. Trump seems to have turned portions of the city into either a construction zone or an armed camp as he seeks to prove that he alone can improve a city he interacts with primarily from his armored limousine or presidential helicopter.

There’s no “seems to have” about it. Trump did this. That’s like saying “Trump seems to have demolished the East Wing of the White House.” He did it. He did not beautify Washington DC for the nation’s 250th birthday this weekend. He trashed it. But he says he beautified it so that’s all that matters in MAGA Land.

★ Thursday, 2 July 2026