How one algae-choked pool became the perfect reflection of Trump’s presidency

OPINION:

There’s a certain poetry in the fact that President Trump’s grandest Washington beautification project — a gleaming, “American flag blue” Reflecting Pool fit for the nation’s 250th birthday — has instead become a stagnant, pea-green swamp that smells like a gym bag left in a hot car.

If you wanted a single image to capture this administration, you couldn’t paint one better. And, fittingly, Mr. Trump tried.

The paint is now peeling off. He came with the promise to “drain the swamp,” but instead he created one — and it cost $15 million of your tax dollars.

Let’s review the saga, because it has everything: hubris, algae, dead ducks, no-bid contracts and a man who has never once in his life done anything wrong.

The premise was simple. Mr. Trump looked at the century-old Reflecting Pool — plagued for decades by leaks, broken pipes and persistent algae — and decided he, a builder of “more than 100 swimming pools,” would fix what lesser presidents could not.

He demanded the liner be patriotic blue. He promised it would “last 50 to 100 years.” He awarded a $14.7 million no-bid contract to a Virginia firm that had previously worked on the pools at his golf club, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like skipping the part where you compare prices.

And here’s the cherry on top: A separate $1.7 million no-bid contract to install an algae-killing “nanobubble” system went to a company owned by John J. Cafaro, a longtime Trump donor, a Mar-a-Lago neighbor and a man who once pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a congressman.

The name of the company (and I swear this is not made up) is Greenwater Services.

The pool reopened. Within weeks, the algae returned with a vengeance — satellite imagery showed it at a five-year high. The “crystal clear” water the Interior Department triumphantly announced on social media turned a shade of green best described as “gross.”

Then the blue paint began floating to the surface in sheets. Workers were photographed dumping gallons of 12% hydrogen peroxide into the water, a concentration strong enough to burn skin and endanger wildlife. A few ducklings have since been found dead in the pool.

Oh, and by the way, that peroxide solution? Strong enough to break down paint.

Now, surely, the president took responsibility for this multimillion-dollar belly flop? Reader, you have not been paying attention.

No, the problem was vandals. Saboteurs. “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE!” Mr. Trump declared on Truth Social, claiming that shadowy figures had taken “some form of knife or blade” and carved a gash into his masterpiece.

The gash was 250 feet long. Then it was 300 feet. By Monday, in the Oval Office, it had grown to 350 feet, allegedly cut “from one end to the other” with a box cutter.

Reporters went to the site. They found no slit. Asked for proof — a photo, a video, anything — the president offered a master class in evidence-free conviction: “Well, let’s put it this way, when you have a 350, I think it’s 350, not 250, when you have a 350-foot slit, from one end to the other, you think that’s proof? You think that’s proof?”

No, Mr. President. That is the opposite of proof. That is a number you said.

Mr. Trump promised that the evidence would surface “in court.” He suggested someone might have secretly added fertilizer to grow the algae. He floated that the same mysterious chemicals used to etch an “86 47” message into nearby grass had been deployed in the pool.

He accused an ABC reporter of personally trying to “rip the rubber off the surface.”

And he is now threatening to sue ABC for daring to report that the project cost $16 million, insisting — again without evidence — that Presidents Obama and Biden spent “over 100 million dollars” on a pool that “never worked.”

The grand finale? After all this — the no-bid contracts, the algae, the peeling paint, the dead waterfowl — Mr. Trump announced he will drain the whole thing and start over.

“We met with contractors today, will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water,” he wrote. Fifteen million dollars and several deceased ducks later, the solution is to pull the plug and try again.

Mr. Trump has been dying for a legacy in Washington. He tacked his name onto the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — at least until a judge ordered it removed. And he wants to build an “Arc de Trump,” a 250-foot arch covered, as usual, in gold.

But the president now has the perfect memorial to his presidency. Murky, mismanaged, blamed on everyone else and about to be drained and done all over again. The Trump presidency in a nutshell.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at [email protected].