The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg couldn’t contain her laughter at President Donald Trump’s outlandish punishments for apparent vandals of the Reflecting Pool.
Trump has been enraged with his failed updates to the Reflecting Pool, as chunks of “American flag blue” paint are peeling off of he bottom, and algae continues to bloom. Trump has since claimed that the algae is the result of vandals and has pledged to drain and renovate the pool for a second time.
“He is claiming that vandals are to blame,” Goldberg said. “He says they illegally placed chemicals in the water and left a 300-foot gash in the pool. Now, five people are said to have been arrested. He says a 10-year prison sentence will be strictly enforced.”
Goldberg then began laughing uncontrollably, at times struggling to get words out, as she elaborated on Trump’s disastrous renovations.
“Well, if he says he’s going to jail for 10 years, I’m going to let him go,” Goldberg chuckled.
“It seems to me, that had he not messed with the pool, it would still be a reflecting pool instead of a liquid jungle, which is what it looks like. But to accuse five people of doing this, but seemingly there’s no proof,” she added.
Goldberg also offered a solution to the Reflecting Pool’s algae woes, saying she wanted someone to “sue because if a contractor did this at your house, this is what you would do.”
“I think the country needs to say we’re suing you, suing you for doing this without our permission and we’re suing the people who did it because clearly they didn’t know what they were doing. Clearly,” she said. “But, you know, it’s just a suggestion because, you know, a lot of money is going away.”
Algae blooms have notoriously plagued the Reflecting Pool, as still water in Washington, D.C.’s hot and humid climate is the perfect incubator for them.
But the Trump administration has declared war on the algae after the water turned green just days after the $14 million Trump-ordered renovation on the Reflecting Pool had finished. Interior Secretary Doug Bergum has said he was treating the algae like he would the Iranian Navy as his department cooks up ways to mitigate the bloom.
The government has sent workers to attempt to offset the bloom by removing the algae and pouring hydrogen peroxide into the water. But as that has transpired, blue paint flakes have floated to the surface of the pool.
Trump has blamed shoddy “renovation” on apparent vandals, claiming they committed very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments," and will spend “years in jail!
In a follow-up post, he claimed that some of the vandals could face up to 10 years in jail.
And in another post about the matter, he further alleged vandals “took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250-foot-long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete.”
The president has provided no evidence for any of his claims regarding the nature of the damage.
He later admitted that his project had been a disaster, and said it would need to be drained once again to fix the damage.
“Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool. I just inspected it, and could only say to myself, and those gathered around me, WOW, who would do such a thing?” Trump wrote on Sunday. “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE! We will fix it?”
Punishing the alleged vandals appears to be a top priority for Trump’s top federal prosecutor in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, who echoed the president’s claims of sabotage when speaking to her former employer, Fox News.
“Make no mistake, making D.C. beautiful is a priority, and if you damage, vandalize, or do anything to impact something like the Reflecting Pool,” Pirro said. “You can be prosecuted.”
