Donald Trump has spent all summer (and around $15 million tax payer dollars) to find out that the DC Reflecting Pool is just like all other mirrors: not his friend. He insisted that he could renovate the pool so that algae would never haunt the warm, shallow water again, and that it could all be done on a tight timeline for July 4. When that demonstrably failed, he swore it wasn’t the fault of his uneducated decisions but instead was subterfuge by VANDALS! He even got his puppet US attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro to further the vandalism lie by charging a former Olympian with destruction of government property. But even Pirro has a limit, apparently, and moved to have the charges dropped after her office actually reviewed the evidence — that the damage was caused by “flawed installation.” Trump has been raging out at Pirro ever since for breaking ranks. So believe me when I say I was shocked — SHOCKED I tell you! — that Trump actually said the thing himself, admitting that there was “some contractor error done by rushing the job.” What??!
“There was substantial damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are working on the Pool, and it will reopen shortly. As with many jobs, there was also some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening, but it was a very small area of this massive Pool, and was relatively inconsequential.”
Trump claimed that a National Park Service “career employee, a highly credible witness,” saw Olympian David Hearn “in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating.” He added that this employee’s testimony was provided to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The president concluded his post by saying that security cameras “have been, and are being, installed.”
The remarks were posted to Truth Social the day after Trump posted photos of alleged vandalism amid a push for Pirro to revisit the decision to drop the charges against multiple people also accused of vandalizing the pool.
This other post on Truth Social included two photos of what appeared to be graffiti and some peeling of the coating of the pool. Both photos were labeled with the word “Vandalism.”
Trump is pushing for the Justice Department to backtrack on its move to drop criminal charges against people accused of damaging the site. On Friday, the president pressed Pirro to revisit “her hastily made decision.”
D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman formally dropped the charges against Hearn and will later decide whether prosecutors can try to charge Hearn in the future.
The president last week accused Pirro of having “choked” in response to the decision.
Pieces of “American flag blue” paint floated to the Reflecting Pool’s surface following renovations to the pool leading up to the country’s 250th anniversary. Trump claimed the peeling paint, and green algae blooms that appeared in the pool’s waters, were perpetrated by vandals.
Pirro’s office blamed the contractor for overspraying and delamination after the charges against Hearn were dropped.
“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed,” prosecutors wrote.
From a psychological viewpoint, Trump’s mind (or the cavity therein) makes for a fascinating case study. I mean, the endlessly repeating pattern of rejecting expert advice, instead going “Of course I can get this done regardless of the way science works!” Then it falls apart, and Trump moves right into the “Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes” phase. And then he starts the cycle all over again with another issue. Where is the embarrassment from being so publicly proven wrong? MULTIPLE TIMES? Where is the learning curve? So again, I can’t believe Trump even bothered to post the factually accurate assessment of the pool damage: contractor error. And not just the error of picking a verifiable cartoon villain for a contractor, but then the dumb insistence on rushing the job. Why bother uttering a truthful statement now? Especially after he was (and still is?) going after Pirro so hard. Remember, Don got so frothed up over her dropping the charges that he was captured on video forgetting the word… video. And he also said (though it came off more hilariously than menacingly) that Pirro “folded like an umbrella.” His brain truly is a… unique specimen, biochemically speaking.
Photos credit: MediaPunch/Backgrid, Getty Images and via YouTube
What about the vehicles driving through it?
He is obsessed with making DC into what he imagines it should look like and I hate it. Couldn’t even go the usual way into work today because of all of the road closures and fencing for that stupid Grand Prix.
Everything mango touches turns to shit and turns into a money laundering scheme. He overpaid an incompetent political crony once for the job and now gets to hand out more bribe money to have the job done over and over and over at massively inflated prices. Every member of congress who refuses to impeach this moronic ugly crook needs voted out in November. Congress has equal power and could stop this lunacy if they weren’t too busy lining their pockets (and ab#sing women and children).
OMG, Kismet, you tagged it FAILURE!!! I love you for that!
The thing about the reflecting pool debacle is that Trump is in the Epstein files tens of thousands of times.
This bitch will always place the blame on others and never on himself.
Good on you, Sue.